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September, 1923 Number 1 

The Refere nee Shelf 

Briefs, Bibliographies, Debates, Reprints 
of Selected Articles and Study Outlines 
on Timely Topics 

<5 Published by THE H. W. WILSON COMPANY 

958-9? 2 University Avenue G l^ew York City 


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Volume II 


State Censorship of Motion Pictures 

J. R. RUTLAND, Compiler 

INTRODUCTION 




The motion picture industry lias grown in a decade 
from a very insignificant business to what producers 
claim is the fourth largest industry in America. Starting 
as a one-reel comedy of fights, fallings, and a chase or 
two, the film has challenged competition with the drama 
and the novel in the field of fiction, with the newspaper 
and the magazine in the field of news and art, and with 
books and lectures in school work. No town is complete 
without its picture houses; cities have scores of them for 
all classes and at all prices, some of them in palatial 
homes; almost every village community in the land either 
has its own exhibitor or is in easy reach of one. In fact, 
it is estimated that ten million people in the United States 
alone go to the movies every day and that thousands more 
see American pictures in all countries of the earth only 
a little less frequently. By all odds, the motion picture 
is now the world’s largest commercialized form of en¬ 
tertainment. 







o 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Its influence is effective and far-reaching. In the days 
before prohibition, it was heralded as the conqueror of 
saloons. Some critics feared years ago that the “legiti¬ 
mate” drama could hardly survive the severe competition 
of the movies. During the war with Germany, our lead¬ 
ers made extensive use of motion pictures not only to 
urge us to buy bonds, to economize on clothes and food, 
and to look out for the ubiquitous spy, but also to tell us 
what to think and to keep us passionately determined to 
do our bit. Big business has found that moving pictures 
are short cuts in teaching employees technical manipula¬ 
tion as well as wholesome entertainment in leisure hours. 
Even churches have found it necessary to adapt pictures 
to the service of religion. It may be true, as a recent 
contributor to the magazines has said, that the Hollywood 
state of mind is entirely too common and that we are in 
process of changing our national character under the in¬ 
fluence of a machine that can tell us the news, give us 
the exhilaration of travel, show us the ends of the earth, 
portray all kinds of human conflict, make us laugh and 
cry at will, and point its own moral in a most effective 
way. 

Social workers, teachers, and parents are calling atten¬ 
tion to what seems to them to be a direct connection 
between the movies and child crime. Psychologists tell us 
why children and adults of limited intelligence may be 
tempted to imitation by the glamor of a criminal act in 
the pictures and lack the self-restraint or the ability to 
foresee the consequences of crime in real life, with which 
they might hold themselves in check. Some think that 
manners are being vitiated by “comics” in which pie-plas¬ 
tering, Falstaffian fighting, pitching unwelcome guests out 
of windows, dumping heroines into mud puddles, and so 
forth, descend in deluges upon the impressionable youth 
and the untutored mind. Others see as much danger to 
normal adults in the reiteration of criminal themes, the 
popularity of the domestic triangle situation, the visual- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


3 


ization of vamping and attempted seduction, as zealous 
patriots saw not long ago in German propaganda. Thus, 
it may be seen, its critics flatter the motion picture by 
seeing in it a power that uncurbed may disrupt the bonds 
of society and government and destroy our dearest ideals. 

Business men’s organizations, women’s clubs, cham¬ 
bers of commerce, religious and charitable organizations 
have made extensive investigations of moving picture 
conditions and influences and have proposed a variety of 
remedies for the evils involved. One serious student has 
recommended a system of state or Federal licensing of 
producers to curb the publication of vicious pictures. A 
bill has been introduced in the House of Representatives 
for the purpose of establishing a national commission of 
censorship. About thirty states have considered some 
sort of state censorship and seven have adopted it. On 
the other hand producers and their friends object to any 
outside regulation, claiming the right, accorded to news¬ 
papers, to publishers of books, and to dramatic producers, 
of doing their own censoring and of accepting punish¬ 
ment at the hands of the law when they violate it. Many 
authors, publishers, and others to whom censorship 
sounds un-American and who fear the possibility of 
further extension of censorship, agree with picture mak¬ 
ers and dealers that public opinion, and not a board of 
censors, should be their sole judge. That this plan will 
succeed is shown, producers claim, by the undoubted 
improvement made in recent months. 

Censorship is a vital question. All agree—even the 
producers and distributors—that some sort of regulation 
is necessary, that unlimited publication in pictures is un¬ 
wise. What, then, is the best kind of regulation? Among 
the many answers to this question—of which probably the 
most important are Federal censorship by the Bureau of 
Education, censorship by the National Board of Review, 
a general system of licensing producers and distributors, 
state censorship, and the judgment of public opinion 


4 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


voiced by the patrons of the pictures—this volume pre¬ 
sents the pros and cons of state censorship. Although it 
has been planned for debaters, the general reader will find 
it helpful in the formation of an intelligent opinion on the 
subject. 


June 9, 1923. 


J. R. Rutland. 


BRIEF 


Resolved : That state censorship of motion pictures 
should be adopted in the United States. 

Affirmative 

I. The existing methods of censorship and regulation, 

other than state regulation, are unsatisfactory. 

A. The National Board of Review is insufficient. 

1. It has no legal power to enforce its deci¬ 
sions. 

2. It may be, or can easily become, a tool of 
the producers. 

a. They contribute to its support. 

3. A New York city board cannot represent 
satisfactorily all parts of the United States. 

B. Existing laws are inadequate. 

1. Complaint from the public or a lawsuit is 
necessary to have a film withdrawn from 
exhibition. 

2. In some cases, present laws governing im¬ 
moral entertainments have not been inter¬ 
preted to cover motion pictures. 

3. Responsibility for the exhibition of a vici¬ 
ous picture is not adequately placed. 

4. Offenders are punished only after bad pic¬ 
tures have been shown and have been seen 
bv thousands of people. 

C. Local or municipal censorship is not satisfac¬ 
tory. 

1. Only larger communities have adopted the 
plan. 


6 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


2. The plan cannot easily function in a small 
community. 

a. The producers would not likely sub¬ 
mit expensive films. 

b. Competent censors are not easily avail¬ 
able in all small communities. 

D. Advisory organizations—like women’s clubs, 
community motion picture bureaus, and like 
organizations—are helpless when exhibitors 
and producers find a strong public (?) demand 
for salacious pictures. 

1. They cannot punish violators of the laws of 
decency, except as heretofore explained. 

2. Even their children’s curfew and special 
selected program schemes have not been 
successful. 

II. State censorship would improve the present situa¬ 
tion. 

A. It would simplify regulation. 

1. It would fix responsibility on a board of 
censorship. 

2. It would create a uniform standard of 
judging films for a whole state. 

B. It would be less expensive. 

1. Money spent for municipal censorship 
could be saved. 

2. State boards of censorship are self-support¬ 
ing. 

C. Jt would safeguard society from the insidious 
influences patent in unregulated exhibition of 
moving pictures. 

1. It would protect the small child and the 
adolescent from the shock of witnessing 
violence. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


7 


2. It would curb that encouragement of crime 
inherent in the reiteration of criminal 
themes. 

3. It would prevent the derision of racial or 
religious groups and officers of the law. 

4. It would protect poorer sections against 
low, vulgar, or worthless films. 

5. It would elevate the tone of pictures in¬ 
tended for adults by excluding pictures 
of low moral influence, such as vulgar 
comedies, over-emphasis of the domestic 
triangle, and other sex themes. 

a. What happened to “Carmen" is an ex¬ 
ample. 

6. It would eliminate from films suggestions 
that might give foreigners false impres¬ 
sions of America. 

a. Many of our films shown abroad have 
given foreigners false ideas about our 
manners and morals. 

b. Immigrants get warped ideas of 
American social standards. 

Censorship has already improved conditions. 

1. The “thirteen points” subscribed to by 
several producers are a concession to con¬ 
structive censorship already established in 
certain states and municipalities. 

2. Supporting producers are slow to send out 
through exchanges pictures that have been 
condemned by official and unofficial boards. 

3. Censors eliminate unfit scenes and reels 
very frequently. 

a. (See lists of eliminations by New 
York, Pennsylvania, or other state or 
municipal boards.) 


8 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


III. State censorship is in harmony with American ideas 
and ideals. 

A. It is constitutional. 

1. A liberty may be infringed upon by legisla¬ 
tion with the consent of the Supreme 
Court, when restriction results in a benefit 
to all the people. 

a. The 18th Amendment prohibiting the 
manufacture and sale of alcoholic 
liquors has stood the test. 

2. If state censorship were not constitutional, 
the laws creating state censorship boards 
in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virgin¬ 
ia, New York, Florida, and Kansas would 
have been declared unconstitutional. 

a. Courts have sustained these laws. 

B. If picture censorship seems to discriminate 
against the movies in favor of the press and 
the drama, the immensely greater immediate 
influence of the movies makes the problem dif¬ 
ferent and more serious. 

1. The movie has a vastly larger audience 
than both the press and the drama. 

2. The conditions for “crowd psychology,” 
which causes people in the mass to yield 
to suggestions that they would instantly 
reject in the office or at home or elsewhere, 
are normally present in the movie theater. 

3. James’ idea of the “moral holiday” in the 
lives of respectable people is apparently 
confirmed by the fact that audiences will 
applaud movie pictures of the subtly sala¬ 
cious type or of a crime that breaks an 
otherwise impassable barrier between the 
hero and the heroine. 

4. The visual appeal is stronger than any 
other. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


9 


C. State censorship is fair to the producer and 

distributor. 

1. Censorship prevents violation of the law. 

2. The fourth largest interstate business must 
be suitably regulated, like other big busi¬ 
ness. 

3. Community or local censorship, if generally 
adopted, would work a greater hardship. 

a. The number of varying opinions 
would be greater. 

b. Expense and delay would be greater. 

4. Censors are considerate. 

a. They respect the producer’s rights as 
well as the public’s. 

(1) Changes in decisions show wil¬ 
lingness to take producer’s point 
of view. 

5. Delay of releases would not he very seri¬ 
ous. 

a. Cooperation between state hoards 
would be feasible. 

b. Pictures recommended by reputable 
agencies could, in some cases, be 
passed tentatively without review. 

6. The producers and distributors must share 
with the exhibitors the responsibility for 
bad pictures. 

a. Common law governing local amuse¬ 
ments, now in force, reaches only the 
local picture show manager. 

7. Expense of eliminations would he reduced 
to a minimum. 

a. Manufacturers would know what 
the legal standards were. 

D. State censorship is fair to the individual and to 

the local community. 


10 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


1. Small communities are unable to cope 
singly with the giant movie business. 

a. Without cooperation, such as state 
censorship gives, small communities 
have to take what the exchanges send 
or nothing. 

2. Political perversion of news and senseless 
mangling of educational pictures are very 
rare, and, sometimes, may be justified in 
view of local conditions. 

3. Absurdities and inconsistences of elimina¬ 
tion, denying the citizen’s right to see all 
that may be shown, will grow fewer year 
by year. 

a. Producers will meet the new demand 
of public opinion. 

b. Censors will profit by experience and 
by cooperation. 

4. No pictures of really great merit will be 
denied exhibition. 

a. Boards of censors, in the long run, will 
consist of intelligent people who will 
adequately enforce public opinion. 

b. Narrow-minded censors who mangle 
pictures passed elsewhere will be dis¬ 
missed. 

Negative 

I. State censorship, as it is practised today, is un¬ 
democratic. 

A. It is out of harmony with the spirit of the 

American Constitution. 

1. It provides for punishment before crime 
has been committed. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


11 

2. It limits freedom of speech and publication 
necessary in a democracy and guaranteed 
by the Constitution. 

a. It restricts publication to the private 
opinion of a few politically appointed 
individuals. 

3. It takes away from communities the right 
of self-government in matters not affecting 
other communities. 

B. It is class legislation and as such discriminates 
against moving pictures, as compared with 
other forms of free speech, the newspaper, the 
book, the magazine, and the drama. 

1. Other organs of free speech are not called 
to trial until they have published offensive 
material. 

2. Other publishers are allowed to defend 
themselves in open court before a jury of 
their fellows. 

3. Censorship retards unjustly the natural de¬ 
velopment of pictures. 

a. It seriously limits the right of experi¬ 
mentation. 

b. It would compel, if adopted by forty- 
eight states, forty-eight differing con¬ 
ceptions of morality and good taste. 

4. It would delay releases. 

a. Forty-eight state boards would have to 
pass upon a picture. 

State censorship is not satisfactory where it has 
been tried. 

A. What one board eliminates another passes. 

1. Whole reels condemned by one state are 
permitted in another. 

2. No two boards make the same eliminations 
in the same film. 


12 


THE REFERENCE SHELF* 


P). News and educational films are sometimes tam¬ 
pered with. 

1. News reports of Hughes’ condemnation of 
movie censorship were forbidden in Kan¬ 
sas. 

2. Scientific and educational films have been 
mangled to conform to rules formulated 
for amusement films. 

C. The censor privilege has been perverted for po¬ 
litical reasons. 

1. The negro vote in Ohio prevented the 
showing of “The Birth of a Nation’’ in 
that state. 

2. The Ohio and Pennsylvania censorship 
boards eliminated pictures of the coal 
strike in 1919—the latter at the request of 
the governor. 

D. Reasons for elimination are often inconsistent 
and absurd. 

1. “Carmen" was rejected in three states for 
three different reasons. 

' 2. Ohio permits no pictures of smoking 

women. 

3. Pennsylvania prevented the showing of a 
farcical scene in which a man burns a let¬ 
ter from his wife, because (forsooth) it 
showed contempt of the marital relation. 

E. No universal, absolute standard of morals and 
good taste can be formulated. 

1. The conception of what is immoral, inde¬ 
cent, or not in good taste varies with the 
individual, social group, or in accordance 
with one’s experience, education and en¬ 
vironment. 

a. Pictures of bathing girls, of dancing 
in short skirts, etc., would be received 
differently in different communities. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


U 

b. Although Schnitzler’s “Anatol” on the 
stage or in the pictures would excite 
little adverse comment in Paris or Vi¬ 
enna, it would be considered unfit in 
many an American community. 

2. Censorship is helpless in dealing with slap¬ 
stick comedy, romantic tommyrot, scien¬ 
tific misinformation, inartistic plots, many 
distasteful views of life that may he true. 

a. No two people react similarly. 

b. Taste and good judgment are products 
of slow growth and maturing intel¬ 
lect. 

F. Pictures in censorship states are not better than 

those in other states. 

1. No state board can meet absolutely all com¬ 
munity conditions. 

2. Elimination often mars the author's or the 
producer’s intended artistic efifect. 

G. Censorship creates the wrong attitude of mind 

for censors and producers. 

1. The censor feels compelled to eliminate. 

2. The producer makes up films with obvious 

faults so that there may be something to 
delete. 

H. It is not a satisfactory solution of the child 

problem. 

1. Pictures for adults must not be censored 
for children. 

a. It is unfair to adults,, for whom pic¬ 
tures are chiefly made. 

b. Parents must protect children from 
these as they protect them from vici¬ 
ous books and periodicals. 

2. It is the parent’s business to censor for his 
children. 

a. Parents, like censors, differ. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


H 


(1) One parent is known to have 
taken his daughter to see “Dam¬ 
aged Goods,” a play on a subject 
usually banned from the conver¬ 
sation of young girls, 
b. Pennsylvania prevents the display of a 
layette or any suggestion of approach¬ 
ing maternity, whereas many parents 
believe in dispelling the “stork” illu¬ 
sions by talking about natural facts in 
a frank manner. 

III. State censorship, if censorship there must be, is not 
the best method of protecting the public from bad 
pictures. 

A. If censorship before publication be essential, 
national censorship is better. 

1. It would be less expensive to the people. 

a. One board could serve for all the 
states. 

b. It would eliminate opportunities for 
graft by state boards. 

2. It would set the same standards of taste and 
morals, right or wrong, everywhere. 

B. A licensing system would be better. 

1. The responsibility for bad pictures would 
then be placed, where it ought to be, on the 
producer and distributor as well as on the 
exhibitor. 

2. Fear of loss of license to continue business 
would deter manufacturers from making 
pictures about which they had any doubts. 

C. Local public opinion is the best judge of the 
fitness of local amusements. 

1. Churches, clubs, parents, and good citizens 
may enforce local standards of taste and 
morals. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 15 

2. The local exhibitor can then be held re¬ 
sponsible. 

D. The National Board of Review is impartial and 

efficient. 

1. Its nearly two hundred members receive no 
salaries—not even carfare. 

2. Its work is supported by taxes on films re¬ 
viewed, by sale of its services, and by sub¬ 
scriptions from persons and organizations 
interested in the production of good pic¬ 
tures. 

3. It serves directly large cities in thirty-eight 
states through bulletins and other means. 

4. It assists churches and educational organ¬ 
izations in finding suitable pictures. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


STATE CENSORSHIP OF MOTION 

PICTURES 

Bibliographies 

Cleveland. Chamber of Commerce. Shall the movies be 
censored? pa. Cleveland, Ohio. 1922. 

Phelan, J. J. Motion picture as a phase of commercial¬ 
ized amusement in Toledo, Ohio. $2. Little Book 
Press. 1915 Jefferson Av., Toledo. 1919. 

Russell Sage Foundation. Motion pictures, a selected bib¬ 
liography. Bui. no. 54. 4p. pa. 10c. New York. 1922. 

St. Louis. Public Library. Motion pictures. 25c. 1920. 

United States. Library of Congress. List of references 
on the moving picture industry. 27p. mimeograph. 
Washington. Feb. 9, 1922. 

General References 
Books and Pamphlets 

Ball, Eustace H. Photoplay scenarios, p. 66-88. Prob¬ 
lems of censorship, pa. 30c. Cosmopolitan Book 
Corporation. New York. 1915. 

Bartholomew, Robert O. Report of censorship of motion 
pictures. City Council. 32p. Cleveland, O. 1913. 

Blanchard, Florence B. Censorship of motion pictures. 
23p. pa. Englewood Print Shop. 417 W. 63 St., Chi¬ 
cago. 1919. 

Cannon, Lucius H. Motion pictures; laws, ordinances 
and regulations on censorship, minors and other re¬ 
lated subjects. 119-68p. 25c. Municipal Reference Li¬ 
brary. St. Louis, Mo. July, 1920. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


17 


Child Conference for Research and Welfare. Proceed¬ 
ings. 1909:55-9. How much children attend the 
theater, the quality of the entertainment they choose 
and its effect upon them. E. H. Chandler. 

Child Conference for Research and Welfare. Proceed¬ 
ings. 1910: 108-18. Motion picture. John Collier. 

National Conference of Charities and Correction. Pro¬ 
ceedings. 1910. p. 145-9. Five cent theater. Mrs. W. 
I. Thomas. 

National Conference of Catholic Charities. 7th session. 
1921: 50-5. Motion pictures as a social problem. T. 
D. Hurley. 

National Conference of Social Work. Proceedings. 
1920:311-13. Motion picture and the upbuilding of 
community life. O. G. Cocks. 

National Education Association. Proceedings. 1912: 
456-61. Effect on education and morals of the mov¬ 
ing-picture shows. J. R. Fulk. 

Schneiderhahn, Edward V. P. Motion pictures; influ¬ 
ence, benefits, evils, censorship. 68p. pa. St. Louis Uni¬ 
versity. St. Louis, Mo. 1917. 

Women’s Co-operative Alliance, Inc. Better movie move¬ 
ment ; the Minneapolis better movement plan and the 
report of a survey of the Minneapolis motion picture 
houses; a plan and study in the interest of the better 
movie movement made by the research and investiga¬ 
tion department, pa. 15c. Minneapolis, Minn. Feb. 
1921. 

Woodruff, C. R. Censorship. Bulletin of the Society for 
the Prevention of Crime. 

Periodicals 

American City. 21 :59-69. Jl. '19. Movies in an average 
city. C. Holliday. 

American Magazine. 72:92-f~. Ag. 13. Cleveland inves¬ 
tigation of motion pictures. 

Bellman. 22: 7. Ja. 6, '17. Morals of the movies. 


i8 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Bookman. 48:653-9. F. ’19. Movies: a colossus that 
totters. 

Child Welfare Magazine. 12:41-2. N. 17. Better films. 
Mrs. F. Michael. 

Collier's. 69: 16. F. 11, 22. Public will turn. Hey wood 
Broun. 

Current Opinion. 58:411. Je. '15. Bernard Shaw's uto¬ 
pian vision of the films of the future. 

Current Opinion. 59:244. O. '15. Immoral morality of 
the movies. 

Drama. 18:248-61. My '15. Theory and practice of the 
censorship. T. H. Dickinson. 

Elementary School Journal. 23:327-8. Ja. 23. Public 
and censorship of pictures. 

Forum. 61:611-20. Mv. 19. Mastering motion-pictures. 
C. Miller. 

Harper's Monthly. 138: 183-94. Ja. '19. Majestic movies. 
H. Rhodes. 

Harper's Weekly. 54:12-13. Jl. 30, '10. Morals and 
moving pictures. W. Inglis. 

Illustrated World. 27:14-19. Mr. *17. Cut out by the 
movie censor. W. T. Walsh. 

Independent. 77:432-3. Mr. 30, 14. No censorship. 

Independent. 110:6. Ja. 6, 23. Screen in politics. 

Journal of the Association of Collegiate Alumnae. 11: 
225-8. D. '17. What college women can do for better 
motion pictures. O. G. Cocks. 

Ladies' Home Journal. 33:30. Ja. T6. Better movies 
for children. E. L. Gilliams. 

Literary Digest. 48:702-3. Mr. 28, '14. Chicago movie 
censorship. 

Literary Digest. 49:233-4. Ag. 8, T4. Solving the cine¬ 
ma's morals. 

Literary Digest. 69:29-30. My. 28, *21. Movie censor¬ 
ship in Japan. 

Nation. 113: 140. Ag. 10, *21. Revamping the vampires. 

New Republic. 2:262-3. Ap. 10, 15. Censoring motion 
pictures. W. D. McGuire, Jr. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


19 


North American Review. 212: 80-7. Jl. '20. Latest men¬ 
ace of the movies. W. P. Eaton. 

Outlook. 101: 598-9. Jl. 13, ’12. Motion picture—the 
good and the bad of it. D. O. Hibbard. 

Outlook. 103: 103. Ja. 18, 13. Motion pictures: safety 
and decency. 

Outlook. 107: 387-8. Je. 20, ’14. Morals of the movies. 
Outlook. 107 : 412-16. Je. 20, 14. What to do with the 
motion-picture show; shall it be censored ? F. C. 
Howe. 

Outlook. 127: 103-4. Ja. 19, ’21. World’s worst failure. 
H. T. Pulsifer. 

Outlook. 127: 136-7. Ja. 26, ’21. Apology for the pic¬ 
tures ; reply to H. T. Pulsifer. N. A. Fuessle. 
Outlook. 127: 292-3. F. 23, ’21. Movies; comment on 
articles by H. T. Pulsifer. N. A. Fuessle and others. 
Outlook. 128:660. Ag. 24, ’21. Child and the movie. D. 
C. Fox. 

Outlook. 133:296-8. F. 14,’23. Movies. 

Overland Monthly, n.s. 73: 119-20. F. ’19. Value of the 
film. F. D. Ormston. 

Pictorial Review. 24:22+ Je. '23. Behind the screen. 
Samuel Goldwvn. 

Playground. 16:307-8, 363-4, 416-17, 451-2. O. ’22-Ja. 

’23. Motion pictures and the churches. C. N. Lathrop. 
Review of Reviews . 42:315-20. S. 10. Moving picture 
and the national character. 

Review of Reviews. 50: 730-1. D. ’14. Passed by the Na¬ 
tional board of censorship. 

Saturday Evening Post. 194: 12. Ap. 8. 22. Nemesis of 
the screen. K. F. Gerould. 

Sunset. 47: 36-8. Jl. ’21. Slaughter of the innocents. R. 
Bentinck. 

Sunset. 47:36-8. Ag. ’21. Whose is the guilt? R. 
Bentinck. 

Sunset. 48:40-2. Ja. ’22. They’ll have only themselves 
to blame. S. E. White. 


20 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Survey. 22: 8-9. Ap. 3, '09. Censorship for moving pic¬ 
tures. 

Survey. 26:469-70. Jl. 1, ’ll. National censorship of 
motion pictures. 

Survey. 32: 337-8. Je. 27, ’14. Applying standards to mo¬ 
tion picture films. O. G. Cocks. 

Survey. 34: 4-5. Ap. 3, ’15. Films and births and censor¬ 
ship. 

Survey. 34:423-7. Ag. 7, ’15. Censorship in action. J. 
Collier. 

Survey. 34: 513-16. S. 4, ’15. Learned judges and the 
films. J. Collier. 

Survey. 35:9-14. O. 2, ’15. Censorship; and the Na¬ 
tional board. J. Collier. 

Survey. 35:662. Mr. 4, ’16. Morals of the movies. 

Survey. 35:663-8. Mr. 4, ’16. Film library. J. Collier. 

Survey. 37:555. F. 10, ’17. Banning the nude in the 
movies. 

Survey. 44:108-9. Ap. 17, ’20. Boston and the movie 
censorship. A. Woods. 

Survey. 46:231-2. My. 21, '21. Censorship. 

Woman’s Home Companion. 43:3. My. ’16. Will you 
stand with me? 

Woman’s Home Companion. 43:12. S. '16. Saturday 
morning shows for children. C. Thurber. 

World To-day. 19:1132-9. O. '10. Censoring the five- 
cent drama. C. V. Tevis. 


Affirmative References 
Books and Pamphlets 

Chicago Municipal Reference Library. Censorship of 
motion picture films in cities in the United States other 
than Chicago. 18p. mimeograph. 25c. 1918. 

International Reform Bureau. Save the moving picture 
from the sex undertow. Washington. (75c for 100). 

International Reform Bureau. Why Congress should in¬ 
vestigate the moving picture industry. (35c for 100). 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


21 


Kansas. State Board of Review. Annual report. To¬ 
peka. 1920. 

Kansas. State Moving Picture Censorship Commis¬ 
sion. Biennial report. Kansas City. 1922. 

Kansas. State Moving Picture Censorship Commission. 
Complete list of moving picture films presented for 
review, 1515-1919. Topeka. 

Maryland. Law establishing board of moving picture 
censorship. Baltimore. 1922. 

Maryland. State Board of Censors. Annual reports, 
1917-1919. Baltimore. 

Maryland. State Board of Censors. Sixth annual report, 
1921-1922. Baltimore. 

New York. State Moving Picture Commission. Annual 
report, 1921. Albany. 

New York. State Moving Picture Commission. Report, 
1922. Albany. 

New York. State Moving Picture Commission. Rules 
and regulations. 1921. 

Oberholtzer, Ellis P. Morals of the movie. 251 p. $1.25. 
Penn Publishing Co. Philadelphia. 1922. 

Pennsylvania. Board of Censors of Moving Pictures. Re¬ 
ports, 1915-1919. Harrisburg. 

Pennsylvania. Board of Censors of Moving Pictures. 
Rides and standards. Harrisburg. 1915. 

Russell Sage Foundation. Correction and Prevention. 
3: 366-9. Censorship of theaters, moving pictures, and 
related entertainments. Charles R. Henderson. 

Virginia. State Board of Censors. Law and rules and 
regulations. Richmond. 1923. 

Periodicals 

Bookman. 49:42-3. Mr. T9. Juveniles and the movies. 
C. H. Towne. 

Bookman. 53:242-4. My. ’21. Moving pictures, books, 
and child crime. R. S. Sheldon. 

Bookman. 54: 193-9. N. ’21. Motion pictures; an industry 
not an art. Burton Rascoe. 


22 THE REFERENCE SHELF 

Child. 12:106-9. Ja. ' 22 . Cinema and child welfare. 
Preston King. 

Collier’s. 51: 11. Ap. 12, ’13. Immortality in the films. 
M. Michelson. 

Collier’s. 70:3-4. S. 16, ’22. Why 1 am ashamed of the 
movies. 

Commerce Reports, no. 262. p. 532-3. N. 8, 17. British 
commission suggests motion-picture reforms. E. 41. 
Dennison. 

Current Opinion. 56: 290. Ap. 14. Moral havoc wrought 
by moving picture shows. 

Current Opinion. 69:337-9. S. ’20. Are the movies a 
menace or a boon to mankind ? 

Current Opinion. 70:320-3. Mr. ’21. Crime wave and 
the movies. P. W. Wilson. 

Current Opinion. 72: 505-7. Ap. '22. Moving-picture 
morals attacked and defended. 

Education. 40: 199-213. D. '19. Movies—bane or bless¬ 
ing? C. W. Crumly. 

Fortnightly Review, i 13: 717-28. My. '20. Propaganda 
films and mixed morals on the movies. S. Low. 
Fortnightly Review. 115:222-8. E. ’21. Cinema and its 
censor. Bertram Clayton. 

Forum. 67:37-41. Ja. '22. Movies, an arraignment. S. 
L. M. Barlow. 

Forum. 69: 1404-14. Ap. '23. Censorship of the movies. 
Joseph Levenson. 

Good Housekeeping. 51 : 184-6. Ag. 10. Primary school 
for criminals. W. A. McKeever. 

Harper’s Weekly. 60:39-40. Ja. 9, '15. How the censor 
works. W. P. Lawson. 

Harper’s Weekly. 60:63-5. Ja. 16, '15. Standards of 
censorship. W. P. Lawson. 

Independent. 110: 191. Mr. 17, '23. Why attack books? 
Theodore Dreiser. 

Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation. 16: 
346-53. Jl. '16. Children and the cinematograph. E. 
Man son. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


23 


Literary Digest. 49: 1175. D. 12, 14 Movies and morals. 

Literary Digest. 51:591-2. S. 18, ’15. Movie crimes 
against good taste. 

Literary Digest. 64: 38. F. 21, ’20. Church’s duty to the 
movies. 

Literary Digest. 67: 34. 1). 4, 20. American films cor¬ 
rupting Britain. 

Literary Digest. 68: 35. Ja. 29, ’21. Making the movies 
safe for the child. 

Literary Digest. 68:32. Mr. 12, '21. Movie abuses a 
national calamity. 

Literary Digest. 69: 19. My. 7, ’21. Motion pictures and 
crime. 

Condensed from Scientific Monthly. 12: 336-9. Ap. ’21. 

Literary Digest. 69:32-3. My. 14, ’21. Nation-wide bat¬ 
tle over movie purification. 

Literary Digest. 71:28-9. O. 15, ’21. Time to clean up 
movie morals. 

Literary Digest. 71:28-9. N. 26, ’21. How our films mis¬ 
represent America abroad. 

Living Age. 281: 251-3. Ap. 25, T4. Plague of pictures. 
A. Berlyn. 

North American Review. 212:641 -7. N. ’20. Censor and 
the movie menace. E. P. Oberholtzer. 

Outlook 113:694-5. Jl. 26, ’16. Movie manners and 
morals. 

Quarterly Review. 234:177-87. Jl. *20. Cinema. Ber¬ 
tram Clayton. 

Review of Reviews. 63: 555, My. '21. How motion pic¬ 
tures promote crime. 

School and Society. 7: 55-7. Ja. 12, ’17. Moving pictures 
and child welfare. 

Scientific Monthly. 12:336-9. Ap. ’21. Motion pictures 
and crime. A. T. Poffenberger. 

Social Hygiene. 7: 181-219. Ap. ’21. Psychological study 
of motion pictures in relation to venereal disease cam¬ 
paigns. K. S. Lashly and J. B. Watson. 


24 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Spirit of Missions. 86: 545-8. Ag. ’21. Problem of motion 
picture control. L. F. Hanmer. 

State Service, New York State Magazine, p. 41-5. S. 21. 
Making the movies fit for the people. 

Survey. 34:82-3. Ap. 24, ’15. Censorship of motion 
pictures before the Supreme court. G. H. Montague. 

Survey. 44: 181-3. My. 1, ’21. Freedom of the screen 
versus censorship. W. D. McGuire, Jr. 

World’s Work. 41 : 249-63. Ja. ’21. What are the movies 
making of our children ? E. P. Oberholtzer. 

Yale Review, n.s. 9:620-32. Ap. '20. Moving picture; 
obiter dicta of a censor. E. P. Oberholtzer. 

Negative References 
Books and Pamphlets 

Chase, William S. Catechism on motion pictures in inter¬ 
state commerce; shall this interstate business be na¬ 
tionally controlled, a trust prevented, and a demor¬ 
alized business be reestablished? 56p. The Author, 
Brooklyn, N.Y. or International Reform Bureau, 
Washington, D.C. 

Cleveland, Ohio. Chamber of Commerce. Shall the 
movies be censored? 22p. pa. 1922. 

Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America. Com¬ 
mission on the Church and Social Service. The motion 
picture problem. C. N. Lathrop. New York. 1922. 

McKelvie, Governor S. R., of Kansas. Veto of motion 
picture censorship bill, mimeograph. National Board 
of Review of Motion Pictures. 70 Fifth Avenue., New 
York. April 28, 1921. 

Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. 
Massachusetts verdict and its significance. 522 Fifth 
Avenue, New York. 1922. 

Motion Picture Theater Owners of America. Case against 
censorship. 21p. 1482 Broadway, New York. April, 
1921. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


25 


National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Activi¬ 
ties of tlie National board of review of motion pic¬ 
tures. pa. gratis. New York. Jan. 1, 1921. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Boston, 
Mass, method of motion picture regulation, pa. gratis. 
New York. 1919. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Brief bv 
Mayor Gay nor in opposition to censorship of motion 
pictures. 70 Fifth Avenue, New York. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Hand¬ 
book on the regulation of motion pictures; including 
a model ordinance, based on the report of the special 
committee of the New York state conference of 
mayors and other city officials, appointed to make an 
investigation into the subject; report adopted Feb. 
1920. 8p. New York. 1921. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Issue of 
freedom; a reprint from the Omaha, Nebraska 
Herald, Feb. 21, 1919. New York. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Motion 
picture problem solved. 8p. pa. 5c. New York. 1921. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Objec¬ 
tions to state censorship of motion pictures. 6p. New 
York. 1921. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Question 
of motion picture censorship. 16p. New York. 1921 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Report. 
New York. 1914. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Repudia¬ 
tion of motion picture censorship in New York city; 
report of the Committee on general welfare of the 
Board of aldermen, June 10, 1919. 6p. New York. 

National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. Standards 
adopted by the National association of the motion pic¬ 
ture industry, January 19, 1917. I5p. New York. 1917. 

Nealev, W. A. Motion picture censorship and organized 
labor. National Board of Review of Motion Pictures. 
New York. 


26 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


New York State Conference of Mayors and Other City 
Officials. Report on state censorship of moving pic¬ 
tures. W. P. Capes, Secretary. Albany, N.Y. 

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Edu¬ 
cation. Federal motion picture commission; briefs 
and statements filed with the Committee on education, 
on H. R. 456, to create a new division of the Bureau 
of education to be known as the Federal motion pic¬ 
ture commission, and defining its powers and duties. 
65p. 64th Congress, 1st session. Washington. 1916. 

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Edu¬ 
cation. Federal motion picture commission; hearings 
on H. R. 456. 303p. 64th Congress, 1st session. Wash¬ 
ington. 1916. 

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Educa¬ 
tion. Motion picture commission; hearing on bills to 
establish a Federal motion picture commission. 234p. 
Washington. 1914. 

Periodicals 

American City. (City ed.) 16: 125-31. F. ' 17 . Motion 
pictures and local responsibility. C. Brenton. 

Atlantic Monthly. 128:22-30. Jl. ’ 21 . Movies. K. F. 
Gerould. 

Bookman. 49:263-7. My. 19. Viewing with alarm. 
Rupert Hughes. 

Bookman. 54:313-17. D. *21. What about motion pic¬ 
tures ? Gilbert Parker. 

Collier’s. 67: 14-15, 24-5. My. 14, ’21. Where does cen¬ 
sorship start? Heywood Broun. 

Collier’s. 70: 15-16. N. 4, ’22. You can’t censor nonsense. 

Current Opinion. 62: 185-6. Mr. '17. Threats of Federal 
censorship. 

Current Opinion. 62:408. Je. ’17. Why is a censor? 

Current Opinion. 65:98-9. Ag. T8. Distinguished wit¬ 
nesses indict and defend the screen drama. 

Current Opinion. 70:362-3. Mr. ’21. Overdoing the sex 
motive in moving pictures. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


27 


Current Opinion. 70:652-5. My. *21. Should moving 
pictures be censored? 

Current Opinion. 73: 67-8. Jl. ’22. Common sense and 
motion picture censorship. 

Educational Review. 55:398-409. My. ’18. Motion pic¬ 
tures and child development. L. A. Averill. 

Film Progress. 7:4. Ap. ’23. Sermon on censorship. 
N. D. Hillis. 

Continued in later issues. 

Forum. 53:87-99. Ja. *15. Our prudish censorship. T. 
A. Schroeder. 

Forum. 59:307-15. Mr. ’18. Have the movies ideals? 
W. A. Brady. 

Forum. 67:42-5. Ja. '22. Movies; in their defense. R. 
E. MacAlarney. 

Harper’s Weekly. 59:577. D. 19, ’14. Morals and 
movies. 

Independent. 86:265. My. 22, ’16. Un-American in¬ 
novation. 

Independent. 105:662. Je. 25, ’21. Big shears—or com¬ 
mon sense? H. MacMahon. 

Independent 110: 192-3. Mr. 17, '23. Absurdity of cen¬ 
sorship. H. B. Liveright. 

On censorship of books chiefly. 

Ladies’ Home Journal. 38:24. Ap. ’21. Common sense 
and the film menace. 

Ladies’ Home Journal. 39:7. Ag\ ’22. Why aren’t the 
pictures better ? J. Barrymore. 

Ladies’ Home Journal. 39: 13. S. 22. Let me say this 
for the films. D. Fairbanks. 

Literary Digest. 68:28-9. F. 12, ’21. Where the blame 
lies for movie sex-stuff. 

Literary Digest. 74: 33-4. Jl. 15, ’22. Public demand for 
risque movies. 

Literary Digest. 76:29-30. F. 17, ’23. Screen dealings 
with Dickens and Hugo. 

Literary Review. New York Evening Post. D. 30. ’22. 
Movie, censor and the public. Clayton Hamilton. 


28 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Moving Picture World. 28: 1853-4. Je. 10, ’16. Federal 
censorship is wholly bad. W. S. Bush. 

Nation. 112: 581. Ap. 20, ’21. Morals and the movies. 
New Republic. 12:100-1. Ag. 25, ’17. Movie morals. 
S. N. Behrman. 

New Republic. 33:179. ja. 10, ’23. Morals and the 
movies. Charles Merz. 

A review of Ellis Payson Oberholtzer’s “Morals of the Movie.” 

New Republic. 33:225-6. Ja. 24, ' 23 . Salome and the 
cinema. 

New Republic. 33: 282-4. F. 7, ’23. Celluloid psychology. 
New York Times. Mr. 13, ’21. Let George do it. 
Nineteenth Century. 89:661-72. Ap. ’21. Influence of 
the kinematograph upon national life. Arthur 
Weigall. 

North American Review. 212:88-92. Jl. ’20. What 
kind of a menace is the movie? J. L. Laskv. 


REPRINTS 

CENSOR AND THE '‘MOVIE MENACE” 1 

In my contribution to the North American Review’s 
recent discussion on the “Menace of the Movies,” I have 
no wish to examine the reasons for the fascinating hold 
of the motion picture on the public, but it is my intention 
instead to explain the quarrel of the people, or that part 
of the people who have a responsible social sense, with 
the moving picture on moral grounds. 

That there exists a deep seated feeling unfavorable 
to the film, unless it shall first have passed through the 
hands of competent officers, who shall inspect it, to see 
what it contains, is undoubted. The declarations of large 
numbers of secular organizations dedicated to the cause 
of social betterment, as well as many religious and semi¬ 
religious bodies are proofs that the manufacturer who, 
for his profit, will pander to the peoples lowest tastes, will 
not for very long go forward uncontrolled. The rules 
which T. P. O’Connor enforces as Film Censor of Great 
Britain; those which must be heeded in Quebec, Ontario 
and all the provinces of Canada, in Australia and in Jap¬ 
an ; in Pennsylvania, Chicago and several other states and 
cities in this country, are founded on the conviction that 
there are common public rights which must be guarded as 
this great new industry proceeds on its victorious course. 
The fact that there were bills proposing boards of review 
before the legislatures of twenty-five or thirty states last 
year, and that these proposals will reappear in the same 
legislatures next year, and thereafter, if necessary, until 
they are enacted into law, further confirms the observant 

1 By Ellis Taxson Oberholtzer, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Board of 
Motion Picture Censors. North American Review. 212 : 641-7. November, 

1920. 


30 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


man, whether he be in or out of the industry, in the 
knowledge that in the belief of those who, guided by a 
conscientious purpose, usually cause their views to pre¬ 
vail in the end, there is a “menace” which calls for com¬ 
munity action at once. 

The nature of the picture man’s offense is not difficult 
to state by one who has gained a familiarity with the 
whole film output, as it comes from the projection rooms 
of a board of review like that in Pennsylvania, for, let 
us say, five years, as I have done, seeing and considering 
it each day with the aid of my colleagues and assistants 
to the extent of from twelve to twenty million feet annu¬ 
ally. The experienced British Board of Film Censors has 
classified its objections under a variety of heads. Omitting 
those which are dictated by considerations of public 
policy due to the war, they are seen by reference to a 
recent report to include the following: indecorous, ambig¬ 
uous and irreverent titles and sub-titles; cruelty to ani¬ 
mals; the irreverent treatment of sacred subjects; 
drunken scenes carried to excess; the modus operandi of 
criminals; cruelty to young infants and excessive cruelty 
to adults, especially to women; the exhibition of profuse 
bleeding; nude figures; offensive vulgarity and impro¬ 
priety in conduct and in dress; indecorous dancing; ex¬ 
cessively passionate love scenes; gruesome murders and 
strangulation scenes; executions; the effects of vitriol 
throwing; the drug habit, e.g., opium, morphia, cocaine, 
etc; subjects dealing with the white slave traffic; scenes 
dealing with the effects of venereal diseases, inherited or 
acquired; themes and references to “race suicide”; ma¬ 
terialization of the conventional figure of Christ. 

Turning to Pennsylvania, which has taken a leading 
position in this department of community service in this 
country, it is plain that its rules reflect the same standards 
of moral feeling and are aimed at the correction of the 
same evils. It could not be otherwise for the material 
under review comes from the same sources. It appears 
that 90 per cent of all the films shown in Great Britain 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


3 i 


originate in the United States. 1 Last year we exported 
to that and other foreign countries enough cinema ribbon 
to encircle the earth twice at the equator. The law in 
Pennsylvania which has been serving as a model for the 
rest of the country, prohibits what is ‘'sacrilegious, ob¬ 
scene, indecent or immoral,” and “may tend to debase or 
corrupt morals,” and the definitions given to these words 
as a result of the observations of the members of the board 
in that state have led to the use of a code very similar 
to that which guides the gentlemen who have control of 
the subject in England. Not very different standards 
direct the course of boards of review in other parts of 
the United States and in Canada, and I infer from infor¬ 
mation furnished me by Mr. Tachibana, the censor in 
Tokio that like views of what is proper and improper 
actuate the authorities in Japan, for they forbid: 

What represents action too cruel and atrocious, disgusting 
and obscene conduct . . . and vulgar . . . love affairs. 

What shows or suggests methods of committing crime or the 
means of covering up crime which may lead to imitation. 

I am no friend of the censor as such, or for that matter 
to any name or political order which suggests govern¬ 
mental control. Indeed 1 am an individualist who would 
dwell in the Arcadian state of Herbert Spencer, wherein 
men would interact one upon another in complete free¬ 
dom. But here are exceptional needs to cover the ex¬ 
ceptional case. It is plain that such an officer is acting 
upon no very new principle. We censor our own thoughts 
before we utter them if we are esteemed as neighbors and 
citizens. This essay will be reviewed and censored before 
it shall come forth in print. The book, the magazine, the 
journal, the advertisement are edited. Precisely this func¬ 
tion is performed bv an officer who surveys the moving 
picture. He edits the film before it is presented to public 
view. That he acts for the state instead of some other 
interest cannot alter the form of service which he per¬ 
forms. 

It should be, 1 believe, not much more unpalatable 

1 Report of British Cinema Commission of Inquiry pp.xxxi and 15 on 
the testimony of Mr. O’Connor. 


32 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


to the author of a play or a novel to have his story 
changed by any censor—more or less competent—put for¬ 
ward for the work than by the producer, director, or 
“scenario writer" in a picture studio. As a matter of 
fact I shall catch the spirit of his work in all probability 
more successfully, alter his script in much less radical 
ways than those worthies, and, if I make excisions and 
reconstructions, I shall, three times out of four, leave 
the film nearer the author’s original form than I found 
it. I, as a censor, have never taken Clyde Fitch’s “The 
Bachelor,” and called it “The Virtuous Vamp;” Barrie’s 
“The Admirable Crichton,” and called it “Male and 
Female:” “La Tosca,” and called it “The Song of Hate;" 
The Jewels of the Madonna,” and called it “Sin;" “La 
Gioconda,” and called it “The Devil’s Daughter." The 
celluloid people have done these things. And there is 
no writer, openly or secretly, who does not rave at the 
slashing and cutting which goes on behind his back by 
the film makers. 

Some producers take two hundred thousand feet of 
film for a picture which in the end will measure only 
seven or eight thousand feet—twenty feet, therefore, for 
one foot intended for final use. All directors make much 
more than they need and then by a process of selection, of 
editing and censoring, and re-editing and re-censoring 
present us with the finished thing. Is it then so very ex¬ 
traordinary a proposal that some one, seeing all from a 
height and representing the common interest, should have 
an editor’s powers over what in the film output shall 
appear to contravene public policy? 

I find nothing strange in such an exercise of power 
with reference to an agency which carries messages 
so vivid and impressive to the population. It is not more 
oversight than we give to a hundred other subjects—not 
more, let us sav. than the supervision of the food supply 
or the automobile. We require that meats, eggs, butter 
and milk shall be wholesome when they are set for sale. 
'Hie driver of an automobile must secure a license; lie is 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


33 


limited in his rate of speed. There aie public interests 
which he must hold in view as he goes up and down the 
road. I say as much for the picture man. We meet him 
as often as we do the vender of food or the motor car, 
and he must he bound to good order. The law which 
prohibits one person from taking the life of another or 
from stealing his child, his ox or his silverware is not for 
that large number of people who have no wish to slay or 
rob. The regulations as to impure food and fast driv¬ 
ing without licenses or lights are not for those who never 
err in these respects. The penalties are for men who 
stand ready to offend. They are silent reminders to 
deter those who might misconduct themselves if they 
could, and stand there to be enforced against those who 
shall dare so much in a direction which is at variance with 
our notions of common weal. 

Again, it is not far from a law which says that nothing 
which is improper on moral grounds shall be shown in a 
theater to another law which is effectively devised to en¬ 
force this principle. From the welter of discussion which 
the subject of censorship has evoked, nothing has come 
so far as I can see, except this: The common law, ampli¬ 
fied by the statutes of the states, and the ordinances of 
cities, governing the character of our theatrical exhibi¬ 
tions, are apparently acceptable to the picture man, and 
the journalist and the attorney, who are employed to 
speak for him. His objection begins only when a method 
is found to give practical effect to the law. It is clear 
that our ordinary police and constabulary authorities are 
unable to exercise a suitable care over the moving pic¬ 
ture house. Their duty is to preserve good order in the 
streets and there, indeed, their competency is sometimes 
in question. With the film which travels hither and 
thither elusively daily, they have neither the time nor 
the knowledge to deal. What more natural, then, than 
to say that this film before it may be shown at all, shall 
be presented to specially delegated officers who shall view 
it, and if they find it good, shall certificate it and license 


34 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


it. It is merely, as I regard the subject, after long con¬ 
sideration of it, a practical means of administering law 
with reference to a new activity, which is of such a nature 
that it cannot be kept under legal control otherwise. By 
this means the film is taken quite out of the control of 
the regularly established police agencies—they are left 
free for their more appropriate tasks, the people are as¬ 
sured that what they and their children shall see will do 
them no injury, and the picture man himself, if he were 
worldly wise, would understand how much he might gain 
by cheerfully assenting to a policy which must protect 
him from the random offender, who with but one bad 
picture may give the public a distorted view of the char¬ 
acter of the whole industry. 

Moreover the picture makers themselves have long 
supported a general system of censorship. In the National 
Board of Censors, now called a Board of Review, they 
recognize the authority as well as the necessity of a gen¬ 
eral oversight of their product. Upon a picture before 
it leaves the studio the legend is printed, with a premature 
assurance, one would suppose, “Passed by the National 
Board of Review.’’ We are given to understand, there¬ 
fore, that the principle of editing film after it is produced, 
of changing it to conform to some standards of social 
right, has the approval of the trade. The only question is 
as to who shall be the judge and the jury in the case. 
Shall the result be arrived at under the direction of the 
defendant and the attorney for the defence, or shall the 
prosecutor have a hand in the proceeding in a regularly 
established tribunal where there may be hope of bring¬ 
ing out the truth and of enforcing at need some penalty 
under regular forms ? That the industry as such has a 
conscious wish to violate the rules of good order, neither 
I nor any who has had its movements under long observa¬ 
tion would assert. Many high minded men have been 
and are now associated with it. But it is particularly 
fluid. Few who were known in it in its first days are still 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


35 

actively interested in its fortunes. Companies rise and 
fall; they are organized and reorganized. A year or a 
month, indeed, reveals a complete change in the personal¬ 
ity of a film corporation. 

The conditions under which film is manufactured, dis¬ 
tributed and exhibited are such that any adventurer can 
enter the business and make his escape before one quite 
knows what he is about. It is a truth beyond dispute 
that a picture designed for prurient tastes will bring a 
long queue to the portals of a theater. That in the long 
run such a “show” will not be successful is a platitude to 
which one can honestly subscribe. But meanwhile this 
kind of an exhibition has had a transient popularity with 
our adolescent boys and girls and others who are perpetu¬ 
ally curious on the subject of sex, and it is gone, its owner 
going with it loaded down with his gains. 

It is this evil note in pictures which I labor with en¬ 
thusiasm and satisfaction to suppress. To know that so 
much may be done and is done is reward enough for 
anyone who has a correct and responsible social feeling. 
The film man who uses a story dealing with sex questions 
in their ugly forms or who makes partial draughts upon 
the forbidden and intimate side of such relationships to 
enliven his theme and lend zest, or “punch" as he calls it, 
to his product, is an enemy of mine and I am an enemy 
of his. That he is engaged, as he wishes me to believe, 
in the noble business of teaching a lesson, I deny. My 
position on these matters is that of the British Board of 
Film Censors on the subject of drug pictures. “It is 
said for such films that they serve to warn the public 
against the dangers of the abuse of drugs,” so runs the 
report, “but the board decided that there being no reason 
to suppose that this habit was prevalent in this country, 
to any serious extent, the evils of arousing curiosity in 
the minds of those to whom it was a novel idea far out¬ 
weighed the possible good that might accrue by warning 
the small minority who indulged in the practice.” 


36 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


I am, therefore, not to be beguiled by the protesta¬ 
tions of such a picture man. I have met him and he re¬ 
sembles a teacher less than anyone I have ever seen. 
Whether he acts for himself or for some league for social 
education which he forms to father his enterprise, he is a 
speculator who is trading upon the salacious tastes of the 
people. It is clear that the theater is not the proper place 
for the inculcation of such lessons, or the theater man the 
proper person to bear such delicate lessons to the young. 
We have the church, the school, the home and our social 
organizations—in them still as hitherto communications 
of this character can be made to boys and girls. Such 
an “educator" is acting with malicious deliberation and 
he needs to be taken in hand vigorously. 

I am not without a sincere confidence in the future of 
the picture if we shall move forward under an enlight¬ 
ened system of oversight. It is probable that an actor 
like Mr. Skinner, that a critic like Mr. Eaton and others 
of us who are tied by sympathy and tradition to the stage, 
may not have the fullest understanding or appreciation 
of this new art. All, however, have the right to demand 
that it shall be decent, and to expect as well as hope that 
the producers will use their endeavors to assist whoever 
may be laboring toward these most desirable and neces¬ 
sary ends. 

•< 

WHAT ARE THE MOVIES MAKING OE OUR 

CHILDREN? 1 

(The Editors of the World's Work have had occasion 
frequently of late to observe a growing concern among 
parents and students of social science, for the influence 
which the motion pictures are exercising on the habits and 
characters of young people. The new theaters are so num¬ 
erous and so cheap and so alluring that they have produced 
almost a social revolution in many parts of the country. 

1 By Ellis P. Oberholtzer, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Board of 
Motion Picture Censors. World’s Work. 41:249-63. January, 1921. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


37 


The art of the motion picture is so vivid that its effects 
upon impressionable minds is tremendous. Here is a new 
moral and educational force of the first magnitude, oper¬ 
ated wholly for private gain and subject to practically 
no control in the public interest. What is its present 
character? How should it be controlled? Dr. Oberholt- 
zer, by virtue of several years’ experience in passing upon 
films before they are released, writes not only as a social 
philosopher but also as an expert upon motion pictures) — 

The Editors 

If the making and exhibition of moving pictures is the 
fifth or fourth industry in the country, as producers of film 
often say, its importance from the standpoint of business 
cannot be easily over-rated. They declare, too, that one 
out of ten persons in our American states—men, women, 
and children—goes into a picture house daily. We export 
enough film to Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and 
the South Seas in a year to girdle twice around the earth 
at the Equator. The trade spells wealth to large numbers 
of people identified with it, just as it also means entertain¬ 
ment to the multitudes in this and other countries who 
watch its reels unfold their endless story of adventure and 
romance. 

One must wonder what changed consciousness, what 
altered outlook comes to those who live in this shadow- 
land. Is there net gain in it ? We constantly hear that 
there is harm in film, or in some portions of it. Producers 
in their comedies are vulgar. Their film stories are often 
set in the underworld. Boys, getting the suggestion from 
the cinema house, become amateur highwaymen. Those 
who have evil instincts see all manner of crime, indeed, 
the detailed illustrations of feasible methods of commit¬ 
ting it. Keepers are told by inmates of reformatories 
and penitentiaries that they were prompted to wrong 
doing by looking at moving pictures. Adolescents are 
fed upon sex stories and are excited to sensuality and 
passion. The pretty innocence of young womanhood, the 
chivalrv of young manhood are swept away. L T nder the 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


3* 

masque of instructing girls about white slavery or the 
dangers of malpractice, and hovs about offensive infecti¬ 
ous diseases, film which never should he shown is widely 
circulated. 

On the other hand, everyone, everywhere, acclaims the 
“news picture” as the readiest and the most vivid way of 
getting an account of the principal happenings in all parts 
of the world. Camera men, like Associated Press corre¬ 
spondents, are on the ground to record each event, tran¬ 
scribe it and hurry their film to the picture companies of 
New York. The scenic or magazine picture, sometimes 
in color, is educational in a wholesome way. The actual 
scenes of mountain and river, valley, field, desert, lake, 
and waterfall, of peoples, buildings, and things, near and 
far, indeed unto the remotest ends of the earth, are re¬ 
produced with a fidelity which commands our enthusiastic 
admiration. 

The picture play carries a message of hope and cheer 
into the lives of masses of men and women, particularly 
when they are consigned to the dreary routine of hamlets 
to which other dramatic entertainment never comes. To 
the people of many a little town, the film is at once their 
art, drama, literature, recreation and education—their 
only point of contact with the cultural world. It would 
he hard to think of any invention of modern times in our 
great assortment of improvements which has it in its 
power to lay so much at the door of humanity. On a strip 
of celluloid ribbon, no wider than a redding-comb, and 
wound on spools which are unwound and rewound night 
after night until they fall to pieces and then are replaced* 
by similar prints from the “master negative,” so long as it 
endures, a story goes over the world bringing the enter¬ 
tainment imprisoned underneath its surface to millions of 
people. 

The actor on the stage spoke to a few hundred, and 
himself traveled to reach a few hundred more. But now 
his picture travels. It is seen, it may be, a hundred or 
two hundred times simultaneously in as many places in 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


30 


his own country and in a score of foreign lands. Such 
an influence rivals that of all the stages, pulpits, lecture 
platforms, newspapers, and hooks hitherto known in the 
world. A picture company which issues a news reel each 
week announces that it has twenty-nine million readers. 
A popular photoplay comes before as many pairs of eyes. 
“Rags” and “Suds,” many a Chaplin comedy and “Bill” 
Hart “Western” have been seen by ten times twenty 
million. “The Birth of a Nation” has given American his¬ 
tory (false and true mixed together) to more of the world 
than have all the text books in all the schools. The act¬ 
ing, the sumptuous indoor sets, the outdoor scenery, 
remarkable for its variety, the latest mechanical lighting 
effects, entertaining incidents, dramatically arranged, 
have widened the experience, quickened the imagination, 
and satisfied the craving for romance of multitudes who 
are deprived of the education that comes of books, travel, 
and human association, and who but for this agency, 
would live and die in constricted little circles of duty and 
work into which they were born. 

Such a service is of infinite value. It is easily appraised 
and can be cheerfully acknowledged. It would not seem 
any the smaller or less important if we study a side of 
the development of the film business which points in 
another direction. The good only makes clearer the 
wrong of using this influential agency for personal ends, 
for turning it, as in so many outstanding cases, to the 
selfish account of greedy and conscienceless man. In the 
whole product each year there is a quantity of material 
which is manufactured with the primary intent of making 
money out of the salacious tastes of the people. The 
producers of such films, as everyone at all familiar with 
the facts knows full well, are not acting in the interest 
of any dramatic end. They select a theme and give it 
settings with the object, principally, of lining their pockets 
without regard to the public welfare. 

A picture which is made to bear the name of 
“Tainted,” “Hell Morgan’s Girl,” “The She-Devil” (I 
know two separate pictures of this name), “Shackled 


40 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Souls,” ‘‘The Scarlet Woman,” “The Mortal Sin,” 
“The Courtesan,” “The Libertine,” The Littlest Magda¬ 
lene,” “The Sin Woman” by its very title appeals improp¬ 
erly for public support. 

Even when a film story is adapted from a well known 
play, opera, or book, it may be given a new name for 
commercial purposes. I have in mind “La Gioconda,” 
which, when “picturized,” became “The Devil's Daugh¬ 
ter/ “La Tosca” made into “The Song of Hate,” and 
“The Jewels of the Madonna’’ which was offered as 
“Sin.” More recently Barrie’s “The Admirable Crich¬ 
ton” has been filmed as “Male and Female,” Clyde Fitch’s 
“The Bachelor” is “The Virtuous Vamp,” and a story 
founded upon the play, “Du Barry” is “Passion.” The 
picture itself may be unobjectionable; it may indeed have 
positive value. The disheartening, really disquieting 
symptom, when we diagnose the case, is that those who 
are in close touch with our amusement business and fol¬ 
low it for gain feel that they must resort to such con¬ 
temptible devices to attain success. 

So, too, will recourse be had to unfair, if not false, 
advertisement for the sake of what the picture man calls 
“ballyhoo.” I do not allude so much to the appearance 
of “bathing girls” in the street or in the foyer of a theater, 
or special advertising schemes of this kind, as to the plac¬ 
ing upon highly colored posters, which flare in front of 
our picture houses, of sensational, if not lecherous, scenes 
to arrest the attention of passers by. It may be that the 
views which are depicted do not appear in the film at all. 
The unhappy fact is that the maker or distributor of the 
picture is of the opinion, as a result of more or less broad 
experience, that such appeals are strong, and that thus 
shekels may be taken in, when there are not outstanding 
attractions of an honest kind to sell his wares. And by 
good fortune there are other attractions. 

Though the name of a book or play is at times dis¬ 
carded, at other times this name is accounted to have 
great value. A star or a company of stars may seem to 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


41 


enjoy favor enough to draw a crowd to the door. It is 
assuring to know that Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s “Lady 
Rose’s Daughter,” and “The Servant in the House” of 
Rann Kennedy, to mention very recent cases, have been 
held to need no such extrinsic advertisement and that 
players who are always in clean pictures like Mary Pick- 
ford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Marguerite Clark, in what 
ever they may be seen, have had enormous popularity. 
With such instances in mind the conclusion is inevitable: 
that there has been and that there still is a substantial 
demand for the good and the legitimate on the motion 
picture screen. 

I have often been told, when I protested against a 
particular scene in a film, that this is but a transcript of 
what is described in a newspaper or magazine. Conditions 
are very different; the analogy is false. A printed line 
may tell of the birth of a child; a photographic depiction 
of the processes of childbirth is another matter. An assault 
upon a woman may be alluded to in print; it may indeed be 
the climax of a story. But to photograph the last details 
of such an attack and reproduce each movement in the 
graphic method of the “movie” is to offend good taste 
and often good morals. To declare that a man opened a 
window and “cracked” a safe is a usual communication 
but to put the description into film with the reality of the 
actual robbery may be too instructive to those who may 
see the ease and entertain the advisability of imitating 
the feat. 

“Boss” Tweed said when he offered Thomas Nast 
$500,000 for ceasing to caricature him and his com¬ 
panions in thievery in Harper's Weekly—“I don’t care so 
much what the papers write about me—my constituents 
can’t read; but they can understand pictures.” 

So it is with the “movie.” It can be understood by 
persons of the lowest degree of intelligence and by chil¬ 
dren. They can sit in cushioned seats and look, to the 
accompaniment of music, to the vivid and seductive repre¬ 
sentation of scenes upon the screen for hours together, 


42 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


though they may not be able to read a line of print. We 
have begun to use film to instruct strangers from other 
lands as to our American institutions. They are being 
shown on ship board before they land at our ports what 
we conceive it to be good for them to know. What then 
must be the effect, if we shall set before them, after their 
arrival upon our shores, the unrestricted offerings of pic¬ 
ture producers in whose hearts and minds there is an 
absence of responsible feeling—pictures of crime and 
more crime in infinite variety designed to create dissatis¬ 
faction, it may be, and certainly to suggest a defiance of 
the orderly restraints of society! 

I have never seen the running off of a crime serial 
w ithout being induced to grave meditation. The story in 
sixteen or eighteen episodes, two reels of which are shown 
on a Tuesday evening, leaving the hero or heroine, as the 
case may be, under a crushing machine, or in the track 
of a stream of acid, or confined in a sewer amid serpents, 
to be rescued in two reels on the Tuesday following only 
to be hurled in turn into some similar predicament, is an 
achievement on the part of our picture men of which they 
are frankly ashamed. No one can doubt this, yet few 
companies feel that they can present a favorable balance 
sheet at the end of the year's business without constantly 
carrying along one or more of these preposterous con¬ 
tinued stories. 

Frequently we are asked if there is not a film which is 
made for children "movie" fans. This is it. And also 
there is the “slap stick" comedy which Charlie Chaplin, 
“Fatty” Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and Ben Turpin in¬ 
vented, and many like them carry on ad infinitum; these 
must be accounted to be the screen’s contribution in this 
field. The w r eary indulgence with which a boy or a girl 
usually sits through a five or seven reel sex melodrama, 
awaiting the next thing on the program, the reception 
which that thing receives from small hands and feet and 
many a voice makes clear enough their reason for liking* 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


43 


the “movie.” Often as I have sat in the small theater, in 
what we use to call “nickleodeon” before the war came 
to alter our views of prices, the very announcement on 
the screen that the “9th Episode” of “The Flaming 
Spectre,” or “The Black Claw,” or “The Yellow Terror” 
would be presented in that house on the following Wed¬ 
nesday afternoon was enough to awaken Bedlam. The 
psychological effect of such exhiliration of the ganglia of 
the young may be left to those who know the subject 
scientifically. A layman can merely conclude that a given 
amount of pictured crime and violence, unrelieved by 
any lesson in virtue, administered to a brain in a forma¬ 
tive state, each day or week, is not without grave influ¬ 
ence. i 

If it were worth while for us a generation ago to con¬ 
demn the dime novel, which the youth of our land read 
in stolen hours behind the barn, we probably shall not 
have very much approval to bestow upon the same thing 
made into a picture which can be absorbed as water 
enters a sponge without the toil of spelling and getting 
the sense out of the printed characters. Idle man who 
manufactures and distributes such film is acting very 
obviously for his own pecuniary advantage, and the boy 
is acting pretty plainly for his moral disadvantage. Quite 
patently both the producer and the consumer are going 
on without taking account of the larger interests of soci¬ 


ety. 

It is not necessary to be a reformer to be filled with 
wonder and doubt concerning much that proceeds on all 
sides of us. It is a new world. But as one innovation 
succeeds another we orient ourselves with respect to it. 
ddie gasoline driven vehicle has come to fill our roads and 
streets. We have subjected it to reasonable regulation. 
It must not go about at night without lights. It must 
be licensed to proceed abroad at all. It must obey the 
rules as to speed and observe other requirements in the 
interest of public safety. We make certain that food 


44 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


shall be wholesome before it is offered for sale, that water 
shall be pure, that the air around us be not vitiated by 
noxious vapors from the chimneys of our factories. We 
surround ourselves with an infinite number of legal safe¬ 
guards with reference to the concoction and sale of medi¬ 
cines and their application. 

The efforts which are made to convert the most un¬ 
promising of young human beings at school into useful 
citizens are many. From the care of their teeth and the 
public feeding of them when they are hungry up to the 
old purely educational processes developed to the nth de¬ 
gree, our social efficiency has been tried and proved. I 
for one fail to see, therefore, how by any fair system of 
reasoning we can be held to be without some duty to 
inquire into the course of the film man with his fifteen 
thousand or more picture houses set in every nook and 
corner of the land at the door of each inhabitant. The 
misbehavior of this citizen, if he does now or ever shall 
misbehave, is not beyond our concern. The rules which 
we shall make will not be onerous to him, if he will keep 
to the right course—not more than preventive law in any 
other industry. He will feel, we shall wish him to feel, 
the presence of social restrictions only when he runs 
counter to the general sense and acts in some manner 
which we after reasoning together, determine is contrary 
to the public weal. 

How then shall we proceed? Our intervention, if it 
be worthy of our devising at all, must be effective. It 
is pointed out that we already have common law, supple¬ 
mented bv statutes and ordinances bearing upon inde¬ 
cency and obscenity which cover the movie man’s trans¬ 
gressions. So much is true. Legal provisions of this 
kind have been applied irregularly and vicariously when 
the machinery has been started by agencies intended for 
and devoted to the application of other restraints. Some 
voluntary committees and associations have tried moral 
suasion. The producers themselves, sometimes sincerely. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


45 


have united to bring about better conditions in their 
industry. Not a few have felt that if such activity were 
not manifested with reference to other manufacturers, for 
instance, of what is known as the “state’s rights” picture, 
i.e., one sold or leased through special agencies by 
persons not habitually or responsibly associated with the 
trade, the entire situation would be endangered. The 
movement for control, in the face of such examples of 
wrong doing, would extend until public opinion were 
brought to the point of condemning the “movie” in gen¬ 
eral and as a whole. Such fears are not without ground 
and the course taken by such producers has been shrewd. 

But the conditions in this great industry are such 
that spasmodic intercession from such sources has not 
materially improved the situation. The source of the 
difficulty has not been reached, the public interest is no 
more safeguarded than it was before. Clearly, so stu¬ 
dents of the problem after long contact with it declare, 
there must be some legal penalty, such as is provided by 
the existing law on the subject of obscene communica¬ 
tions. And there must be more, for those laws were 
made before the “movie” was dreamed of. They are no 
more applicable to it than the general laws relating to the 
road were applicable to the automobile when it appeared 
on the scene. 

Moreover, so the students of the situation assert, there 
must be special agents whose duty it shall be to watch 

the “movie” and note the course of those showing it 

• 

everywhere. It goes about in its tin box by railway train, 
motor car, and bicycle each day. It is here a little while 
and proceeds almost at once to another place. Before its 
character can be known, after its “one night stand ’ 1 in 
one hamlet, it is off to the next town. Policeman or 
constable cannot deal with it, even if he had standards 
of judgment qualifying hint for such a service. Only 
one method suggests itself to the student of the problem 
and this is a pre-view of the film before it goes forth at 


46 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


all, and the licensing of it to proceed only after it has 
conformed to the rules made for it by intelligent and 
competent men. 

This inspection has been called censorship, a name 
which many do not like. It can be called anything else. 
The point to be held in mind is that the film is to be 
physically looked at and approved as fit for public show¬ 
ing before its circulation is begun. Some one person, or 
small group of persons, familiar with the whole subject, 
must sit in the dark room and review the film, certifying 
to its good quality, if it is good, and insisting upon ex¬ 
cisions and eliminations, if it be not good. Such film as 
no changes can disinfect and purify must be entirely 
barred from exhibition. 

It is to this point in dealing with the problem that 
much of the world has come. England has an effective, 
though it is in a measure voluntary, control by pre-view. 
Scandinavia, all Canada, Japan, British Australasia fol¬ 
low similar methods, as do a number of states and cities 
in the United States. Germany, which lapsed into great 
freedom after the war ended, has recently found it neces¬ 
sary to reestablish reviewing stations to check the exhibi¬ 
tion of offensive film. The law has been invoked and 
the situation is under control. 

It is contended in this country that as soon as the 
weight of pre-view sentiment shall increase sufficiently 
to bring other large states to the support of Ohio, Penn¬ 
sylvania, and those which for some years have followed 
this policy, the evil influences which emanate from film 
will be appreciably reduced. The statute governing the 
Board of Censors in Ohio provides for a “congress" of* 
censors;, which by agreement shall formulate common 
rules and standards. Such a proceeding would give 
needed advice to producers and directors. In their studios 
they could begin a reformation of policy which would be 
for the general benefit. Pending a Federal law to govern 
interstate commerce in films, which has been before Con¬ 
gress repeatedly, there would be a starting point for the 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


47 


choice and treatment of motion picture themes which 
would give the public protection against evil film it seems 
to crave and require, and an assurance to producers that, 
conforming to the provisions of the law in their manu¬ 
factories, they will meet with no interference in the pur¬ 
suit of their business after their film is ready for sale. 

Here is the proposed ground for mutual understand¬ 
ing. Unless one be quite unable to read the signs of the 
times aright, nothing less than such an understanding on 
the basis of definite law, administered by tolerant and 
honest men suitable for their large tasks will satisfy the 
country. Forces are active on every hand which indicate a 
working out of the problem along these lines at an early 
day. Thus will adventurers and speculators be pressed 
from the motion picture field, while that which is of un¬ 
mistakable value will be emphasized and its vast potential¬ 
ity for good will be seen and understood by everyone. 

“MOVIE” MANNERS AND MORALS 1 

Almost invariably in amusements designed to meet 
the popular taste the producers aim below the mark. 
The taste of the normal human being, however uneducated 
and undeveloped, is better than those who are so eager 
to please it believe. One is disappointed to find that 
often the crudest and most vulgar entertainment pro¬ 
duces the greatest applause, but that applause does not 
necessarily proclaim popular taste. Thus at the movies 
one hears constant expressions of boredom from even 
the most unsophisticated people, and constant objections 
more or less articulate to the glaring improbabilities of 
situation or characterization. 

The influential potentialities of the moving picture 
cannot be too seriously considered. Undeveloped people, 
people in transition stages, and children are deeply af¬ 
fected by them. One child who was a frequent attendant 

1 Outlook. 113:694-5. July 26, 1916. Editorial. 


48 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


at moving picture exhibitions when taken to the circus, 
was bored by the exquisite skill of the lassoing feats and 
the fast riding of the cowboys' ponies. Inured to the 
sight of horses on the screen running at the rate of a 
high power motor, the natural motion of even a super¬ 
horse must seem a contemptible thing to the child's im¬ 
agination. 

Another disintegrating effect of the sensational mov¬ 
ing picture is its influence on the child’s sense of humor. 
Watch a Saturday afternoon audience of children laugh¬ 
ing immoderately at automobiles going over precipices 
and other death breeding disasters as if they were the 
height of humor. Any serious minded person must be 
concerned at the spectacle. And it is appalling to con¬ 
template the incredible “movie'' English that the child 
in whose home English may be a foreign tongue is imbib¬ 
ing ! Such sentences were surely never met before in any¬ 
thing but an explanatory leaflet printed in English by one 
who knows it not. A very large number—perhaps the 
majority of men in the moving-picture business—are men 
not born to our language; but nothing could be simpler 
than the employment of some one versed in grammar and 
syntax to write the explanatory paragraphs. “Jim extols 
his brother not to perform some deed" is one caption. 
“Wear this for a sentiment of me” is another. There is 
no end to the strange lingual misapprehensions. 

To the normal grown-up mind the constant exaggera¬ 
tion of gesture, facial expression, action, and situation 
brings its own antidote of boredom, for beyond a certain 
point exaggeration cannot create the effect desired. On 
the other hand, with the vivid pliant mind of the chlftl 
the reaction is not the same. That the resulting effect 
is undesirable cannot be doubted for a moment. A pic¬ 
ture of life in which the heroine spins around like a top 
in lieu of walking, in which the wealthv host shows his 
desire to have a guest leave by throwing him down stairs, 
in which everybody handles everybody with violence, in 
which facial expression resembles the squeezing of a rub- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


49 


ber doll's face rather than any normal action of the human 
features, must give to the young mind an angle upon 
life hopelessly distorted. 

Neither does it seem desirable for the child to learn 
through the moving pictures the changed and sometimes 
viciously altered versions of the classics and history that 
they frequently present. Whether it is an exaggeration 
written into, and therefore weakened, paraphrase of an 
opera story, or whether it is a presentation of a historical 
event, the effect upon the young mind is too often an 
assimilation of facts that are not facts and the acceptance 
of adulterated versions of literature. When there is his¬ 
torical inaccuracy the case is even more lamentable. 

But it is the psychology—or rather the total absence 
of it—in the average moving picture plays that consti¬ 
tutes its greatest danger to the growing mind. Especially 
is this injurious to the more or less rudderless being 
whom we must educate into a good citizen, the child of 
alien parents who too often is contemptuous of the habits 
and maxims of his parents and ignorant of anything 
American but the hybrid pavement life of a polyglot city. 
The version of life presented to him in the majority of 
moving pictures is false in fact, sickly in sentiment, and 
utterly foreign to Anglo-Saxon ideals of our nation. In 
them we usually find the formula for a hero: he must 
commit a crime, repent of it, and be exonerated on the 
ground that he “never had a mother” or “never had a 
chance”—or perhaps because he was born poor. The 
heroine is in most cases the familiar passive, persecuted 
heroine of the melodrama. 

There are laudable exceptions—films that are truly 
educational or of news value, honestly romantic or well 
acted; but taking the “movies” as they are today the 
storv of the average screen drama plays upon the weakest, 
most illogical prejudices and sentimentalities of the less 
thinking classes far more than the old fashioned melo- 
d rama. 



50 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


CRIME WAVE AND THE MOVIES 1 

Altho Americans are sometimes said to be boastful, 
there is no nation which can, on occasion, speak more 
frankly about its own shortcomings. Such a typical 
American is Raymond B. Fosdick, who in his recent book- 
lias dealt in no uncertain manner with what has been in¬ 
accurately called the crime wave, which in the United 
States, every now and then attracts the notice of the 
press. It is perhaps remarkable that in a country which 
gave to the world the card index and the cash register, 
there should not be as yet any criminal statistics on a 
nation-wide scale, like those published for England and 
Wales by the Home Office in London. But Mr. Fosdick’s 
figures, tho local, are sufficiently startling. In the five 
years, 1914 to 1918, inclusive, he finds that Chicago with 
two and a half million inhabitants recorded four hundred 
and fifty-five murders. England and Wales, however, 
with thirty-six million people, recorded only four hundred 
and twenty murders. Of robbery and assault with intent 
to rob. New York City in 1915 reported eight hundred 
and thirty-eight cases while in London, reckoned as a 
larger unit, there were only twenty cases and in Britain 
as a whole only one hundred and two. Yet we are as¬ 
sured bv Mr. Fosdick that the legal definitions of the 
ofifences named are the same for both countries. 

It is often argued that this abnormal percentage of 
crime, in a country otherwise governed more perhaps 
than any other by its own consent, is due to the ill influ¬ 
ence of the movies. Los Angeles has one-twentieth the 
population of London, and it is a fact that of homicides’ 
not intended for the camera, Los Angeles perpetrated 
two more than London in 1916 and ten more than Lon¬ 
don, the following year. Of all the inventions, either 
originated by Americans or especially developed by them, 
the cinematograph is beyond all doubt that which has 

1 By P. W. Wilson, American Correspondent of the London Daily 
News. Current Opinion. 70: 320-3. March, 1921. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 51 

most deeply affected the character of the masses. An 
automobile takes you up in one place and sets you down 
in another, but does not change your mind. An elevator 
only raises or depresses your physical anatomy. A tele¬ 
phone carries your thought but cannot create it. A cash 
register counts your coin and an adding machine adds 
it but your coin is still, as before, either your weapon 
of industrial warfare, your investment of social service, 
your vehicle of pleasure or your idol for worship. But, 
in the movie, you sit in a dim religious light, soothed by 
strains which like Tennyson’s brook go on forever, and 
your imagination, so rendered as impassively sensitive as 
a film itself, has impressed upon it scenes that do often 
lie too deep for tears. Every week scores of millions 
attend these mysterious but not unprofitable seances. No 
art has ever enjoyed so immeasurable a vogue. No fic¬ 
tion, no poetry, no painting, no sculpture, no 
pulpit and no drama has ever reached so un¬ 
countable an audience, in a mood so expectant, so credu¬ 
lous, so impressionable. What the movie has to answer 
for, no one can say yet; even the oculists, tho scenting 
prosperity, are still in the dark before that universal 
screen. But when the time comes, the movie will have 
obviously to answer for much. 

Until I began to think this thing out, I was myself 
strongly of the opinion that the movie has been an insti¬ 
gation to crime. One day my wife and I visited no fewer 
than three picture houses in New York. There we 
learned to our delight of at least three new kinds of at¬ 
tractive felony. It had not occurred to 11 s previously 
that by merely driving our flivver bv the side of grain 
fields and tossing lumps of phosphorus into the ripening 
harvest, we could on a warm day burn out the prairie, 
as Samson used to do, when so inclined, with flaming 
fox-tails. My wife has particularly delicate finger tips 
and the knowledge that a lady with delicate finger tips 
and a stethoscope can open safes without a previous hint 
of the combination came as a curious surprise. Then 


52 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


there was the pretty device whereby you rig up a false 
door in front of a safe, which might not deceive you and 
me but does assuredly deceive the astute police, who 
remain in blissful ignorance that a female burglar, hap¬ 
pening also by coincidence to be the heroine of the film, 
is at work behind, among the Liberty Bonds. Justice is 
also blind. The right man is seldom arrested and hang¬ 
ing is ingeniously reserved for a young fellow who is now 
serving sixty years or so. There is a general assumption, 
whatever the detectives may do, it is still “easy money at 
the Astor Hotel.” 

Innocent aliens like myself are taught what powerful 
aids to crime are the telephone when adroitly cut, the 
automobile, always handy, and the ubiquitous pistol. 
Many as are my reasons for repentance, never have 1 once 
handled a loaded revolver, not even in anger; yet in the 
movies no lady, let alone a village girl, is complete with¬ 
out the dinkiest little pearlhandled death dealer in her 
dressing table drawer. This subtle association of fire¬ 
arms and automobiles has brought the wild and woolly 
west back to Fifth Avenue. 

There is, too, a more subtle suggestion of crime 
underlying the psychology of many “pictures.” The hero 
and heroine often start poor. Indeed, their humble cir¬ 
cumstances are frequently made ugly, as if a wage-earn¬ 
er's child must always have a mouth sticky with molasses. 
But you usually have the comfortable feeling that, some¬ 
where in the background, Texas, for instance, wealth is 
lurking. Poverty is merely an apprenticeship to pleasure 
and pleasure comes with the fifth reel. Not only do these 
fortunate young people get rich quickly, but they get * 
rich without any virtue save good looks and good luck. 
And their reward is more than anv ordinary rich man's 
fortune. Accustomed as I am merely to the west end 
of London—to Blenheim and Buckingham Palace and 
mansions of that modest style—I am amazed by the 
marble halls, the spacious lawns, the sweeping drives, the 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


S 3 


castellated porticoes, the gorgeous salons and noble stair¬ 
ways which seem to be essential to true love in Movie- 
Land. No automobile is looked at after a wedding, save 
the automobile which only a handful of people, even in 
the United States, can afford. And equally resplendent 
are the dresses. Girls whose surroundings would suggest 
that they must make their own, appear in gowns which 
are the dream of the comfortably off. It is at first sight 
of a hat that oftentimes the hero falls in love. And, of 
course, he will find the girl’s hats very beautiful until he 
has to pay for them. 

All this is shown, not as in painting by some conven¬ 
tion of the brush, but in a photograph, actually visualis¬ 
ing live people and animals as if in very truth they ex¬ 
isted. So complete is the illusion oftentimes that in India 
the movie has stirred up a grave perplexity, since the 
natives believe that here is the life lived bv white women 
and their menfolk. A veil of reverence has been rudely 
torn aside; and the sequel is yet to come. But I can 
imagine some disillusionment, even in the United States. 
The immigrant comes here and throngs the picture house. 
There is small hint for him that, like the Pilgrim Fathers 
themselves, he must build his home with difficulty and 
labor hard. When the performance is over, out he goes 
into the streets, to find what? The palaces have faded 
away, but not the pistol,—that is available; not the auto¬ 
mobile—that may be somehow obtained; and as for the 
police, how often has he read of crime, how seldom of 
the sentence! Women, too, in the department stores, see 
exposed to their eye and hand, the very treasures that 
seem essential to a man's love and admiration and their 
own vanity. Theft seems so easy and so venial. 

That is the argument for the prosecution and it seems 
to be, on paper, unanswerable. But there remains a bull 
point for the movies. Los Angeles answers: “You say 
that we promote crime in the United States so that our 
people behave worse than the British; but are you aware 


54 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


that the British also have movies, that for years past, 
nine out of ten of their pictures have been bought from 
us, that it is we who have taught the British working girl 
how to adjust her hat, eat with a fork and look neat in 
a blouse, and if this is so—as it is—why don’t they rob 
banks in London, if the fault lies with the movies? Were 
there no hold-ups in the United States before the movie 
came? Did picking pockets start with Mary Pickford 
and were no trains robbed until Bill Hart went on the 
Red Cross Drive ?" 

That is the other side of the case and it is now for 
the public to hand out the verdict—are the defendants 
guilty or not guilty? Frankly, I do not think that the 
defense is conclusive. If the movie crime were of another 
country than the United States, or of another century 
than the 20th, or of other classes in society than 
those to which belong the spectators, it might be a little 
different. The peril lies in the intimacy of the suggested 
offences. They originate in average minds, in well known 
offices, in familiar bedrooms, in easily identifiable streets, 
where all is going on in the picture just as usual. If there 
be anything in the power of suggestion you surely have 
it there. Moreover, in the movies, as in the Psalms, you 
often have the wicked man flourishing as the green bay 
tree and the young folks are inclined to ask, if he got 
away with it on the big scale, why may not others try 
their hand in a modest way? 


MOVING PICTURES, BOOKS AND CHILD 

CRIME 1 

The reformatory that we visited today receives boys 
from all over the state; boys sent there for all sorts of 
juvenile delinquency—things that among grown-ups are 
called stealing, robbery, burglary, homicide and murder. 


1 By R. C. Sheldon. Bookman. 53: 242-4. May, 1921. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


55 

1 wanted to ask those boys some questions about the 
books they had read and the movies they had seen—the 
same questions that 1 have asked a hundred other boys. I 
now have a sort of composite answer from boys some of 
whom are unusually bright, others ordinary, some dull, 
but all of whom have been either truants, runaways, 
thieves, or liars. I think though that all have been truth¬ 
ful to me—they have no cause to be otherwise. 

One said, “It was the movies that got me in here.” 

I asked, “Do you mean that you stole in order to get 
money to go to the movies, or that you saw pictures that 
made you want to steal ?” 

“I saw pictures that made me think of stealing.” 

“But didn’t the pictures show that the thief always 
gets caught and punished?” 

‘'Oh, ves, but I thought I was wise and wouldn’t get 
caught. I thought I wouldn’t make the mistake he did 
to get caught.” 

That youngster was fifteen, of ordinary intelligence, 
unemotional—he took a chance and lost. 

Another boy, between fifteen and sixteen, graduated 
from grammar school at fourteen, just about the time 
his father died, “got going with the wrong crowd” and 
began to rob; stole an automatic pistol which was acci¬ 
dentally discharged, killing a playmate. He said that he 
had always read a great deal before he went wrong and 
remembered chiefly the Alger books. He had read each 
of them three or four times and had got a great deal of 
good out of them—especially a belief in the poor boy’s 
ability to succeed. 

He was considerably less clear as to what, if any, 
help he had derived from the moving pictures. As he 
put it: “Didn’t get as much out of the movies as out of 
books—there was something good in the books that 
wasn’t in the movies.” None of the books or magazines 
he had read had suggested crime to him, with the excep¬ 
tion of the “Detective Story Magazine.” He blames his 
present trouble on movie scenes of Western holdups. 



56 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


These boys would imitate, not for money gain, but just 
for the love of excitement. 

As a matter of fact many children are brought into 
court for really holding up and robbing other children. 

1 asked this boy what he thought might be done to 
keep other boys from following in his footsteps. He had 
been evidently thinking of this also, for he promptly 
answered, “Don't let them go to the movies so much." 
He would limit them to one visit a week—depending on 
the other six days to keep them level-headed. 

Would it be possible to limit children to specially de¬ 
leted programs, and grant admission only to those chil¬ 
dren who had obtained a good school rating for the week ? 
This method would surely prevent truancy to a degree, 
and help the teachers. 

To go back to the holdups, I talked with another boy, 
Jim, who was guilty of killing a playmate. It appears 
that Jim and his pal, Frank, secured a couple of loaded 
revolvers by some means and started out to “play hold¬ 
up.” Meeting a third party, Jim ordered hands up and 
pointed his revolver, not intending to fire. Frank, stand¬ 
ing behind Jim, fired his gun into the air and Jim, startled, 
involuntarily pulled the trigger and shot the playmate 
“victim" dead. 

Flow I wish that the men who write such scenarios 
and the men who produce them, could visit the criminals 
they have made! The fact that the culprit on the screen 
is caught and punished does not really mend matters. The 
child goes to see the picture craving excitement. The 
climax is reached with the holdup or the robbery, after 
which the child’s camera-eye does not register the unex¬ 
citing scenes of the culprit dully sitting in his prison cell. 

After talking with the boys today, we went upstairs 
to the assembly room to see that most wholesome of 
actors, Charles Rav, in “Homer Comes Home.” You 
should have seen these “delinquents” applaud Homer for 
walking miles rather than use for carfare one penny of 
the hundreds of thousands of dollars he carried—because 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


57 


it wasn't his own. I tell yon, and I tell the producers, that 
people don’t want crime, smut, or drunkenness. 

Now, then, what is the underlying truth? What are 
the movies doing to our children ? Are. they multiplying 
the baneful influence of the old yellow-backed “Nick 
Carter” a thousandfold? Worse than that. Even books 
of that brand could not carry the words necessary to des¬ 
cribe adequately the present movie scenes of hatred, 
cruelty, debauchery, crime, passion. The words would 
be unprintable. For the uses of law, science, or history 
such scenes can be and are described. Thev are, how- 
ever, so cloaked in phraseology as to be entirely without 
meaning to those for whom they are not intended. Un¬ 
fortunately we cannot so shield the motion pictures from 
those who will misuse them. 

No one that I ever talked with can remember much 
more than the title of a motion picture seen a year ago. 
There seems to be no lasting effect—for either good or 
bad. But books—how well we remember the names, the 
characters, scenes, and moral of books we read ten, 
twenty, thirty years ago. What makes the difference? 
Isn’t it that reading forces us to create an image—a con¬ 
cept—which continues to exist in memory? If so, what 
is happening to the memory training of our children? 

When we read, there is time for thought, reasoning 
and the formation of judgment; but motion pictures pro¬ 
gress so swiftly as to permit almost no cerebral action— 
little more than percept. What is happening to the rea¬ 
soning power of our children? 

The Big Brothers as an organization are combating 
the bad influence of the movies, first, by formulating lists 
of books under general heads of camping, scouting, sea¬ 
faring, man-o’-war, building, the great west, engineering, 
railroading, inventions, treasure hunting. Then, as the 
individual Big Brothers learn the particular interests of 
their proteges, a list of selected books is prepared and 
the books lent as fast as the demand comes. Even a boy 
of twelve who thinks he is interested in mechanics is held 


58 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


by reading the lives of Edison, Stevenson, and Watt. 
And a budding musical genius likes to know something 
of the boyhood of Mozart, Sullivan, Beethoven, and 
Sousa. Every child should have the benefit of certain 
prescribed courses of reading—for vocabulary, memory 
training, and reasoning, more than that, he should he 
compelled to read. 

Psychological examinations have shown that certain 
emotionally unstable persons should be prevented from 
seeing pictures of crimes. This prevention we are ac¬ 
complishing with the help of parents and the proprietors 
of the neighborhood movie houses. 

There will be no quarrel with the movies when we 
all realize that they are not the meat of the feast—not 
even a meat substitute—but only the dessert. And we 
want pure materials even in our desserts. 

MOTION PICTURES AND CRIME 1 

One of the surprising things about the wave of crime 
that is reported to be raging throughout the country is 
the large number of very young persons found implicated 
in crimes of all sorts. Much attention has recently been 
given to the matter in newspaper articles and editorials, 
and blame is placed rather frequently upon the motion 
picture. The following article taken from a recent issue 
of the New York Times will serve as an illustration: 

Motion pictures portraying criminals at work have been 

barred in-. Chief of Police- announced 

today that three weeks ago he had given orders to movie censors 
not to issue any permits for any screen drama that showed a 
crime committed, even though the end of the picture might 
show the criminal in a prison cell. 

“It will make no difference whether the criminal shown is 
a hero or a villain,” said the chief. “Even the showing of a 
policeman disguised as a burglar is taboo.” 

The order became public when three youthful robbers, who 
were sentenced to the State Reformatory, said their crimes had 
been inspired by a “crook” moving picture. 

Prohibitions and censorships of any sort are distaste¬ 
ful to the American people, except in cases where the 

1 By Dr. A. T. Poffenberger, Columbia University. Scientific Monthly. 
12: 336-9. April, 1921. 




MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


59 


general welfare can he proved to be at stake. Therefore an 
inquiry into the accusations that have been made against 
the moving picture seems justified at this time when at¬ 
tention is being centered upon the means of crime preven¬ 
tion. The question is a psychological one, and concerns 
the effects of motion picture experience upon the mind 
of a young person. The average adult cannot interpret 
the reactions of a child in terms of his own reactions, 
because there are fundamental differences between the 
two. A knowledge of child psychology is needed to 
understand what the motion picture means to the child. 

As an agent of publicity, with its immense daily audi¬ 
ence of young people, it has great possibilities for creat¬ 
ing and developing in them a spirit of true Americanism, 
a respect for law and social order which are recognized 
as essentials for a democracy. Rightly used, the motion 
picture is one of the most powerful educational forces of 
the 20th century. Its possible influence in the American¬ 
ization of our foreign population, through a medium 
which shall be intelligible to all, regardless of race, is 
scarcely yet realized. But wrongly used and not carefully 
guarded, it might easily become a training school for anti- 
Americanism, immorality and disregard for law—a condi¬ 
tion in which each individual is a law unto himself. We 
have therefore, in a sense, to meet an emergency, to 
begin in time to make of this truly public school the kind 
of educational force that it should be—to prevent rather 
than prohibit. 

In a consideration of the young, we must not fail to 
include that great class of unfortunates designated as 
mentally deficient. They are individuals, who, though 
physically and chronologically adults, are still children 
mentally. The problem of the mentally retarded indi¬ 
vidual is essentially the same as that of the normal person 
of younger years. The moron, the highest type of the 
feeble minded, usually defined as an individual whose 
development has ceased at about the age of eleven years, 
has most of the mental traits of the child of eleven years. 
He has, however, the physical strength, instincts and 


6o 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


desires of the adult. The moron is seldom confined in an 
institution, because his defects are not considered by 
family and friends as great enough for that. As a result, 
this type of individual is at large, and must be protected 
from evil suggestions and from too complex an environ¬ 
ment. Such persons, when the higher forms of control 
which they lack are supplied by guardians or are made 
unnecessary by simplified living conditions, may well 
become useful and self-supporting members of society. 
Without this control, they constitute a real danger, since 
their physical age, which may be from fifteen years up, 
places them in a position to act upon evil suggestions 
more readily than the child. 

What then are the mental characteristics of these two 
groups, children and mentally deficient adults, which 
mark them off from normal adults? 

One respect in which they differ from the adult is in 
suggestibility; another is the lack of ability to foresee and 
to weigh the consequences for self and others of different 
kinds of behavior; another is the lack of capacity and 
willingness to exercise self-restraint; and still another is 
an imagination less controlled and checked by realities. 
All these traits taken together make the child and the 
mentally deficient person especially susceptible to evil in¬ 
fluences. That is why one expects the majority of certain 
kinds of crimes to be committed by persons of retarded 
mental development. And recent statistical studies of the 
relation between crime and mental defect confirm the ex¬ 
pectation. One needs only to recall the epidemics of 
suicide and murder by such means as cyanide of potas¬ 
sium, chloride of mercury, carbolic acid and the like; to 
notice the likenesses in the technique of burglars at dif¬ 
ferent periods of time; to note the cases of false testimony 
in courts and false confessions of crime to realize the 
great suggestibility of such persons and their lack of fore¬ 
sight. Unlike the normal adult, they are unable to resist 
the suggestions of advertisements, posters, newspapers 
and magazines, and of their associates. Naturally, these 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


61 


traits can be played upon for good or for evil. One who 
knows the mechanism of suggestion would expect the 
prevalence of crime, especially when it is advertised by 
these agencies of publicity, to breed more crime. 

Motion pictures, containing scenes vividly portraying 
defiance of law and crime of all degrees, may by an end¬ 
ing which shows the criminal brought to justice and the 
victory of right, carry a moral to the intelligent adult; but 
that which impresses the mind of the mentally young and 
colors their imagination is the excitement and bravado ac¬ 
companying the criminal act, while the moral goes un¬ 
heeded. Their minds cannot logically reach the conclu¬ 
sion to which the chain of circumstances will drive the 
normal adult. A little questioning of such persons who 
attend moving pictures and read stories will indicate how 
different are the factors which impress their minds, from 
those which impress the intelligent adult. "The failure to 
grasp the significance of the story is even more pro¬ 
nounced when it is conveyed only by the posters advertis¬ 
ing it. Here it seems to be the rule to portray only the 
most exciting and glaring portion of the plot with no 
possibility of right interpretation. A survey of any group 
of posters advertising motion pictures, with only their 
direct appeal in mind, will show a surprisingly large por¬ 
tion of them suggesting murder, burglary, violence or 
crime of some sort. The pistol seems to be one of the 
commonest of the stage properties of the motion picture 
advertisement. And a very frequent pose is that of the 
frenzy of rage and the clinched fist ready to strike a 
blow. Those young people and even adults who are 
limited to the advertising posters for their entertainment 
may get evil and anti-social suggestions from them. Con¬ 
sidering the almost unlimited audiences which the adver¬ 
tising posters command, their careful control would seem 
a greater necessity even than that of the plav itself. 

It is just on account of this susceptibility to suggestion 
that tlie mentally retarded criminal and the child criminal 
need a special kind of treatment and .special courts to 


6 2 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


handle their cases. Indeed, much has been done in recent 
vears toward the proper treatment of these two classes 
of criminals. What needs more emphasis now, however, 
is prevention, not cure. Proper control of their environ¬ 
ment is the one factor which will do much to make these 
two classes respectable members of society instead of 
criminals. 

There are many sources of evil suggestions which can¬ 
not be eliminated, so long as there are immoral and anti¬ 
social persons, and to that extent the atmosphere in which 
children develop and the feeble-minded live, must remain 
far below the ideal. But that is a good reason why those 
evils which can be eliminated should be. Such organs of 
publicity as moving pictures, newspapers, magazines, ad¬ 
vertising posters and the like, should not be allowed to 
contribute to the necessary burden of evil suggestion by 
the character of their productions. The purely com¬ 
mercial spirit should be tempered bv a spirit of social 
welfare and education. 

The matters here discussed have not entirely escaped 
attention hitherto. For instance, there was introduced, 
some time ago, into the New York legislature a bill pro¬ 
viding for the limitation by newspapers of publicity which 
may be given to reports of crime. The width and height 
of headlines for such material was specified. The nature 
of these provisions does not especially concern 11 s here, 
but the fact that the matter is receiving attention is inter¬ 
esting. 

These are preventive measures applied from the out¬ 
side. The remedy should come from within. Tt can be 
done, and in fact has been done by newspapers. A survey, 
recently made of a large number of metropolitan news¬ 
papers, shows that they differ strikingly in the way they 
handle reports of crime. In some cases crimes are not 
featured in big headlines and favored positions, and only 
facts that the public can profit by are printed. If the 
motion picture is to become an educational force that it 
is capable of becoming, the censorship must be an internal 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


63 


one. The old notion is outworn that it is necessary “to 
give the people what they want.” It is the function of 
an educational medium and an entertaining medium also, 
to give the public what they should have, in order that 
they may learn to want it. The function of education is 
to create as well as satisfy wants. The future of the 
motion picture is limited only by the foresight of its lead¬ 
ers. 


REASON FOR REGULATION 1 

The motion picture has come to be recognized by 
people who are familiar with the industry as one of the 
greatest agencies for good and evil that exists today. 
The statistics show that one million people, or one-tenth 
of the population, see motion pictures each day of the 
year in the state of New York and about fifteen million 
in the United States. There is no avenue of communica¬ 
tion equal to it. No method is known by which a mes¬ 
sage can be conveyed to so many people in so short a 
period of time. The power of the motion picture is un¬ 
derstood by but few people. Its appeal is so direct and 
so easily understood bv all people that its influence is in¬ 
calculable. It attracts the attention of the children and 
of the illiterate and carries its own interpretation. Justice 
Hinman referring to motion pictures said, in an opinion 
sustaining the constitutionality of the act creating the 
commission: 

Its value as an educator for good is only equaled by its 
danger as an instructor in evil. It requires neither literacy 
nor interpreter to understand it. Those who witness the spec¬ 
tacle arc taken out of bondage to the letter and the spoken 
word. The author and the speaker are replaced by the actor 
of the show and of the spectacle. It is a spectacle or show 
rather than a medium of opinion. 

The foreigner, who cannot speak our language, and 
the illiterate enjoy the picture and receive their impression 

1 Extract from the Annual Report of the New York State Moving 
Picture Commission for 1922. 


64 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


from it as readily as those who are well educated. I he 
industry is young and has had a remarkable growth. 
Today, the motion picture is the principal amusement of 
the great majority of our people and the sole amusement 
of millions. It can be made a wonderful force for the 
education of our people and is today accomplishing great 
good. Bad pictures, however, are equally productive of 
evil. The effect upon children became so apparent that 
a demand for cleaner pictures arose and has spread 
throughout every civilized country. This demand has 
resulted in an attempt to regulate the industry in the 
public interest to the extent, and only to the extent, of 
suppressing evil pictures. The producers recognized the 
evil of bad pictures and the spread of what they termed 
“censorship'' and organized, a few months ago, a corpora¬ 
tion known as the Motion Picture Producers and Dis¬ 
tributors of America, Inc., and placed at the head of the 
organization a distinguished citizen who has sought the 
cooperation of the people generally in what he calls “mak¬ 
ing the screen clean." Just what this organization of 
producers has accomplished, or will accomplish, can best 
be judged bv the public. The fact is, however, that there 
are a great many producers and distributors who are not 
affiliated with the organization referred to and over which 
it has no jurisdiction. Neither has it jurisdiction over 
the films made in foreign countries and which, in many 
instances, are objectionable and should not be exhibited 
here. So widespread, however, has been the demand 
that better pictures be exhibited, that censorship has 
spread in one form or another over the entire civilized 
world. England, all of Canada, Australia, India and other 
English provinces are under a strict censorship, also Italy. 
Germany, Czecho-Slovakia, Poland, Sweden and the Phil¬ 
ippine Islands and in our own country, the states of 
Kansas, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and 
Florida, as well as our own state, have statutes which 
regulate the motion picture. The Florida statute, in sub¬ 
stance , provides that only films approved by the New 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


65 


York State Commission or the National Board of Review 
can be exhibited in the state. Nearly every city of any 
size within the United States has some form of regulation 
or censorship. Japan, Russia and other countries have a 
method of censoring motion pictures. 

There is an agitation going on in practically every 
state in the Union, and a wholesome moral sentiment is 
demanding the removal from the screen of many of the 
pictures now produced. It is contended that evil pictures 
tend to educate children and irresponsible people in the 
different methods of committing crime and escaping 
punishment and reveals to the immature and uninitiated 
in a most flagrant manner, the vices and weaknesses inci¬ 
dent to human nature. Statistics show, in many 
instances, that juvenile criminals are imitating or at¬ 
tempting to commit crimes depicted on the screen. 

The most objectionable films are sent abroad for ex¬ 
hibition ; in fact films are manufactured by certain pro¬ 
ducers for foreign use and for use in what are known 
as the slums of our country. The foreigners, by reason 
of our films, are given a very false impression of our 
country and its institutions. The Commission has 
received many complaints from people in distant countries 
of the character of the films presented to their people. 
Poland, through its officials, has stated that it was neces¬ 
sary for them to enact censorship laws for the reason that 
the American films tended to incite their people to crime. 
An agitation is being had in Mexico to prevent the ex¬ 
hibition of our films in that country due to the fact that 
the Mexican is always represented as a bandit and an out¬ 
law. 

The foreign films are often made by people who are 
not familiar with our institutions and are made to suit 
the tastes and requirements of the people where they are 
produced. Many of these films are not fit to be shown in 
our country. Some of the most disgusting and revolting 
films imaginable, revealing the vices of our people, have 
been produced for exhibition at private entertainments. 


66 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


The industry as a whole should not be condemned for 
these abuses but this does not in any way belie the state¬ 
ment that they exist and that they should be remedied. 

Another evil which is becoming apparent upon the 
screen is the dissemination of propaganda which is in¬ 
imical to American institutions. It is a well recognized 
fact of which the Department of Justice of the United 
States has taken cognizance, that there is a persistent 
effort upon the part of foreign producers and some pro¬ 
ducers in our own country, to produce films which teach 
lessons which are destructive of the fundamentals of our 
government. These films are encouraged by undesirable 
foreigners who gain admission to our shores and seek to 
undermine and revolutionize our form of government 
through insidious propaganda. The legitimate producers 
of films do not approve films of this character. Never¬ 
theless, they are without power to prevent their being 
manufactured and exhibited here, and there is no way by 
which they can be suppressed except through govern¬ 
mental agencies. Many of the foreign films which are 
brought to our shores are decidedly un-American and 
should not be exhibited here. 

One of the favorite arguments of those who oppose 
the regulation of the motion pictures is that by so doing 
the liberties of the producer and the exhibitor are cur¬ 
tailed. Every person’s liberty is curtailed, if you desire 
to dignify conduct bv that term, when his acts tend to 
corrupt the morals of our people and are inimical to the 
public welfare. It is only by the regulation of the con¬ 
duct of the individual that our social status is maintained 
and civilization advanced. The logic of the opponents’ 
argument would be equivalent to a license to do what they 
please, regardless of public welfare, all in the name of 
personal liberty. They also contend that freedom of speech 
and the freedom of the press are endangered by the 
spread of censorship. These rights are safe-guarded by 
both state and Federal constitutional provisions and. at 
the instance of motion picture interests, in suits instituted 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


6 7 


by them, the United States Supreme Court (236 U.S. Re¬ 
ports 241-2), as well as our state courts, have held that 
the motion picture does not come within these provisions 
of the Constitution and that the acts are constitutional. 
These arguments, of course, in the light of the decisions 
of our courts, have no application to the motion picture. 

We are satisfied that the only method by which the 
industry can escape regulation is by the improvement of 
their pictures to such an extent that they will not be a 
menace to the public welfare and then censorship will be 
unnecessary. That time has not yet come. The enact¬ 
ment of a law in one state or the repeal of the law in 
another, will not solve the problem. The struggle will 
go on, for back of it is an irresistible force, the moral 
sentiment of the entire world. 


ELIMINATIONS MADE IN 1922 RY THE NEW 
YORK STATE MOTION PICTURE 
COMMISSION 1 

Statement of Examinations Made, Eliminations 
and Work of the Commission for the Current 


Year, 1922 

Number of films from which eliminations were 

made . 861 

Number of films approved without eliminations.. 2,516 

Number of permits granted without examina¬ 
tions . 326 

Number of licenses issued. 3,377 

Number of features condemned in toto .. 72 

Total number of eliminations made. 3,945 


These are classified as follows: 

Scenes eliminated . 2,968 

Titles eliminated . 977 

Number of reels examined . 11,061 


1 Excerpt from 1922 Annual Report. 










68 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


The following is a statement of the grounds upon 
which the eliminations were made. In some cases, elimi¬ 
nations were made on more than one ground: 

Indecent . 

Inhuman . 

Tending to incite to crime. 

Immoral or tending to corrupt morals. 

Sacrilegious . 

Obscene ... 

The films from which eliminations were made 
classified as follows: 

Dramas .. 

Comedies . 

Comedy dramas . 

Serials . 

News . 

Educational . 

Cartoons . 

From the decisions of the commission, fifty-four ap¬ 
peals were taken by applicants, asking for a review by the 
entire commission. 

(Three appeals were made to the courts, but in each 
case the decisions of the picture commission were up¬ 
held.) 

THE CINEMA 1 

When introducing his daughter, Ninetta, to the notice 
of Nicholas Nickleby, that rhetorical showman, Mr. 
Vincent Crummies, summed up her peculiar characteris¬ 
tics in terms which might be applied without undue strain 
to that form of popular entertainment which now threat¬ 
ens to drive his successors from the scene. “This, sir,” 
said Mr. Crummels, “this is the infant phenomenon. . . I’ll 
tell you what, sir, the talent of this child is not to be 


263 

289 

485 

235 

26 

2 

may be 

434 

207 

84 

69 

36 

21 


1 l>y Bertram Clayton. Quarterly Review. 234: 177-87. July, 1920. 















MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


69 


imagined. She must be seen, sir—seen—to be ever so 
faintly appreciated.” The picture-play is beyond all ques¬ 
tion the “infant phenomenon” in the world of showman¬ 
ship today—a “phenomenon” boasting millions of admir¬ 
ers in every country, and one which, howsoever faintly 
appreciated by the critical, must certainly be reckoned 
with in any social survey of the times. 

There is no escaping the cinema. Its reach and grasp, 
its vagaries and pretensions, and what, in the technical 
sense, at any rate, it may justly call its triumphs and 
achievements, are manifest on all sides. One can hardly 
pick up a newspaper in these days without seeing that 
yet one more “masterpiece” in the realms of fiction or 
the drama has been, or is about to be filmed. The illus¬ 
trated magazines and home journals are full of photo¬ 
graphs and anecdotes of screen favorites; while the 
camera has lured nearly every star of the stage within its 
focus and even got Royalty itself to act for a moving pic¬ 
ture. Prospectuses of new producing companies and 
cinema halls are almost a daily feature of the press. The 
pictures are being adapted to the service of education in 
schools, industry in factories, religion in churches, and 
the pastimes of the private household. The clergy of all 
denominations preach sermons on them, for and against; 
“welfare” institutions debate their moral influence, liter¬ 
ary institutions their artistic worth, and municipal coun¬ 
cillors their intimate connection with the problem of hous¬ 
ing the people who flock to see them. Society leaders 
do not disdain to “walk on” in a picture play that is to 
be well advertised; and the testimonials of civic digni¬ 
taries, men of letters, scientists, and doctors eagerly are 
sought by film showmen to add to the mass of their less 
authoritative methods of publicity. This, one may say, 
is undeniably an “infant phenomenon” among our modern 
arts of amusement. And in the case of such a versatile 
and resourceful young lady it is impossible to tell what 
she will be “up to” next. It must suffice on this occasion 
to look a little closely into some of the things she is “up 


70 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


to” now, to analyze her artistic pretensions, and, above 
all, to examine the basis of her latest claim to be regarded 
as a serious medium of moral and educational propa¬ 
ganda. 

It is a significant fact in connection with the cinema 
that, while its sponsors have shrieked themselves hoarse 
in proclaiming the “lofty moral lessons” and “fearless 
social truth" of this, that, and other five-reel sensation, 
the “phenomenon” itself has been forced on the attention 
of outsiders principally through the appearance of its 
name in the police court, and the frequent association of 
its influence with youthful depravity. A good deal of 
this, of course, can be discounted at once. The puritanic 
opponents of any and every type of theatrical display 
may always be relied upon to judge—and condemn—a 
show on the strength of the poster outside. The enmity 
of the picture-theater manager’s rivals, too, whether of 
the “legitimate” or the “variety” stage, who see a length¬ 
ening stream of patrons at the cinema doors, and only a 
“beggarly array of empty benches” in their own houses, 
may also be allowed for. But it is difficult to suppress 
at times the suspicion that the atmosphere of suggestive¬ 
ness, at any rate, alleged by some to cling round the 
flickering shadows of the screen, would have had to be 
invented if it did not already exist, if only to impart that 
fillip of excitement to an art which otherwise it can 
scarcely be said to possess for the adult mind, once the 
novelty has died away. 

A long and close consideration of the kinds of appeals 
made by the film manufacturer to his clients, and by the 
film exhibitor to his, leads one to the conclusion that the 
trade has not been far behind its critics in calling atten¬ 
tion—“obliquely and by inference”—to the salacious 
character of some of its goods. The cinema is “a great 
power for good/' “a tremendous moral instrument,” and. 
of course, “a strong incentive to patriotism;” one even 
heard that it was “helping to win the war.” But, ming¬ 
ling with all these pious protestations, there is the tin- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


7i 


mistakable undertone of desire in some quarters to be able 
to "dish” the censor and to get past the watch commit¬ 
tees with pictorial versions of "Five Weeks,” "Three 
Nights,” or " Ten Minutes,” and other shady fiction of 
that type. 

These examples are not introduced to mark any 
special condemnation of the pictures as such, but merelv 
to give an idea of the unfortunate surroundings in which 
the "infant phenomenon" has been brought up, and the 
deplorable line of championship adopted by many of her 
backers. Mr. Chesterton remarked a little while ago that 
it was not science he objected to so much as the shadow 
of science. Similarly, one might say that it is not the 
pictures which are wrong, so much as the shadow of the 
showmen on the pictures. An attack was made upon a 
certain film by a church fraternity in Kent the other day 
for no other reason than that the posters advertising it 
were conceived in a style to attract the prurient. If 
these good people had ventured to inspect the film they 
would have found it to be as innocuous, and as dull as 
a Sunday School tract. Wise cinema-goers know better 
than to suppose that the picture outside has much bearing 
on the picture within. The young man who is enticed 
into these places by the voluptuous poses of the lady on 
the bills is doomed to almost the same kind of disillusion¬ 
ment as awaits him when he purchases from a specious 
hawker a copy of "The Wide, Wide World” under the 
impression that he is getting "The Maiden Tribute to 
Modern Babylon.” He might well ask, as the lady did 
at the tame French play, "Quand l'adultere commence-t- 
il?” The "naked truth” in the prefigurement of the pic¬ 
tures may be represented by a shapely and scantily- 
clothed siren. But the actual vision, as projected by the 
operator, is usually somewhat ambiguous as regards the 
"nakedness,” though it may leave small doubt about the 
"truth.” Those who go for "sex” have to be content with 
a model rather heavily draped in a corner, and a philoso¬ 
phic subtitle obfuscating the situation. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


7 ^ 


Lately, however, the “infant phenomenon” has been 
bidding for favor in a more serious role than she has 
hitherto assumed. Having begun by filming a dozen fat 
gendarmes chasing a man in his nightshirt (“comic”) 
and the process of manufacturing clay pipes (“educa¬ 
tional”), she is now rather ostentatiously donning the 
mantle of propagandist drama for the main purpose, it 
would seem, of revealing to our affrighted eyes the rav¬ 
ages of venereal disease. A trio of propaganda pictures 
has been enjoying all the sweets of advertisement 
which accompany an ineffectual interdict. One of these 
was launched with the approval of the Ministry of Health, 
and so could put its finger boldly to its nose at its own 
trade censorship. The other two took the original course 
of appealing to the watch committees and the chief con¬ 
stables over the heads of both Mr. T. P. O’Connor and 
the showmen pledged to support him. 

The “infant phenomenon” has all the luck. And her 
huge success is no doubt due, in part, to the fact that she 
has had the foresight to stave off a state censorship by set¬ 
ting up one of her own, to which, when it runs counter 
to the enterprise of certain sections (as it does over prop¬ 
aganda films), she hasn’t the slightest intention of de¬ 
ferring. 

What strikes one chiefly about the films in question is 
the enormous disparity between their avowed moral pur¬ 
pose and the means adopted to achieve it. Granted that 
it is desirable that the adolescent should receive moral 
and sexual instruction in regard to sexual matters, it is 
questionable whether such lessons should be given in a 
mixed assembly of both sexes. But, even if a case could 
be made out for that, we cannot conceive of any methods 
more mischievous and perverse than those employed by 
the producers and hawkers of these pictures. The stories, 
with the printed innuendoes which accompany them on 
the screen, are almost directly subversive of the real 
warning which ought to be conveyed. For all their high¬ 
falutin asseverations and sordid trafficking in Scriptural 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


73 


texts, the dominant feeling that one carries away from 
such films as “The End of the Road/’ “Damaged Goods,” 
and “Open Your Eyes,” is that if one cannot be “good” 
one should be “careful”—a hygienic counsel of some 
weight perhaps, but not a lesson that one is disposed to 
countersign from the strictly moral point of view. 

Practically the sole interest in the story of “The End 
of the Road” is concerned with who has got, and who 
will get, venereal disease; and who will be cured of it, 
and who will not. The reasons for condemning sexual 
promiscuity are founded upon the deepest moral prin¬ 
ciples, yet these are completely neglected in the film. The 
appeal to idealism and purity of life is never hinted at. 
All that is left is a crude appeal to the emotions by as 
silly a story as it is possible to imagine; the total effect of 
which on the minds of the susceptible can only be to 
transform illicit sexuality into speculative adventure 
which may have no bad consequences (for the man) if 
treated in the right way. 

“Open Your Eyes” sets forth some of the awful con¬ 
sequences of venereal disease in the most revolting man¬ 
ner, and then seeks to tone down the effect of these by a 
feeble film charade which, for driveling insanity, can 
never have been beaten since the early days of this in¬ 
vention. We are told at the beginning that it is time the 
“moralist stood aside and the health officer rolled up 
his sleeves.” If the subject were not so serious the pre¬ 
liminary announcement, in conjunction with the perfor¬ 
mance, would be laughable. For, truly, the spectacle of 
the health officer rolling up his sleeves for a film is as 
ludicrous as that of Mr. Snodgrass rolling up his for a 
fight. We have seen the moralist “roll up his sleeves” 
in many a novel and play, but the result has never been so 
painfully comic as in the story unfolded in “Open Your 
Eyes.” 

The initial thesis of this absurdity is that, if parents 
educated their children in the mysteries and pitfalls of 
sexual contact, venereal disease would be stamped out. 


74 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Two girls are introduced, one of whom is told, and the 
other is allowed to grow up in ignorance. The mother 
of the former (a girl of eighteen, by the way) takes her 
daughter aside and proceeds to inform her—on the 
recommendation of the family doctor—by what process 
she came into the world. Will it be believed that the illus¬ 
tration chosen, whereby to initiate the girl into the po¬ 
tentialities of sex, is that of a hen hatching eggs in a 
basket? With this knowledge the young lady is pre¬ 
sumed to have been let into the secrets of her own phys¬ 
ical nature, and to be henceforth secure from the temp¬ 
tations of man. The other girl’s mother couldn’t even 
think of the hen, and so her daughter came to grief. 
Now, if there were any point in such a comparison at all, 
it would surety have been that the “instructed damsel” 
would at some critical moment in her career, profit bv 
the supposed lessons she had received. But that is not 
how the health officers go to work when they produce a 
film story. The villain of the play, who has contracted 
syphilis (and has failed to treat it in time) ruins the 
ignorant girl, and then, with full consent of her parents 
(who, for all their hygienic principles, make not the 
slightest inquiry into his past), becomes the affianced 
husband of the other girl. They even get as far as the 
altar steps, and would assuredly have consummated a 
second tragedy and knocked the moral of the film all to 
bits, if the fallen woman had not rushed up in a motor¬ 
car in the very nick of time to stop the wedding. It is 
with such inconsequent piffle as this that young cinema- 
goers are adjured to open their eyes to one of the gravest 
of our social evils. The whole teaching of the thing—if 
teaching it can be called—is that, with a moderate degree 
of caution, the dangers of syphilis may be overcome. 
Even the appeal to fear is considerably weakened by the 
insistence on the efficacy of timely treatment; and the 
only lesson enforced is not that virtue is more desirable 
than vice, but that, for the vicious, the services of a 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


75 


recognized medical practitioner are preferable to those 
of a quack. 

A mechanical rendering of Brieux’s play, "Damaged 
Goods,” is another claimant for propaganda honors. This 
film appeared with the blessing of Father V aughn, vouch¬ 
safed for no other reason, so far as one can see, than 
that it quotes Scripture at intervals and “features” a few 
nuns. The story is dreary and commonplace in extreme. 
The remorseless tragedy imported into it by its original 
author is supplanted in the film by a tedious transcript 
on the screen of nearly every word the characters are 
supposed to be uttering. Whatever moral lesson this pic¬ 
ture set out to convey is entirely vitiated by an arbitrary 
happy ending, which is not Brieux’s, but is apparently the 
only kind of ending the film-producers can think of for 
this or any other type of drama. 

It may be said that these propaganda pictures are 
only a side issue of the cinema world, and that the main 
body of the exhibitors regard them with disfavor. If so, 
good ; and one would be glad to see the police equally 
irreproachable. But what, then, of the more approved 
parts in which the “infant phenomenon” disports herself? 
On the more ambitious side of the cinematograph we 
have the “picturization” of novels and plays. All that 
can be said of this indiscriminate dishing-up of the prod¬ 
ucts of study and stage in screen form is that some lend 
themselves well enough to the treatment, and some do 
not. But hardly anybody in the ranks of the producers 
seems to care a rap about the suitability of the selected 
work. All that is asked is: Has it been well boomed 
beforehand, or has the person—writer, composer, or actor 
—principally connected with it a popular name? Just in 
the same haphazard manner in which Mr. Wem- 
mick was wont to exclaim, “Hallo, here’s a church! let’s 
get married!” so the Los Angeles and Ward Stieet 
people exclaim, “Hallo, here’s a big success, let s film it! 
Naturally, this policy has had some amaziner results, from 
that of a version of “Adam Bede,” giving Hetty Sorrel 


76 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


a husband and a happy ending to all her woes, to one of 
“The Admirable Crighton,” showing Lady Mary as a 
Christian slave about to be devoured by a lion! 

In the world of the movies, Maurice Maeterlinck and 
Phillips Oppenheim are equally “eminent.” The names 
of Charles Dickens and Charles Garvice are shouted with 
equal emphasis and the same superb impartiality from 
the same megaphone; and, provided the subject has made 
some previous appeal, the camera man will film you any¬ 
thing from the first chapter of Genesis to the latest comic 
song. Thousands of “well-known” novels in the states, 
indeed, would appear to have anticipated their film-set¬ 
ting by only a few days, or even to have been issued 
simultaneously with the pictures. Many an author has 
discovered that the book for which he received next to 
nothing from his publisher has somehow become 
“famous” at once, directly the latter has disposed of the 
film rights of it. The vast majority of these adaptations 
are distorted out of all resemblance to their originals; and 
even where a photographic resemblance is discernable, 
nearly all the truth to human nature has been whittled 
away. When the producer attempts a “psychology” on his 
own lines—but no; any adequate account of that could 
only be given in a Humorous History of the Film. 

What, then, would seem to be the legitimate role of 
the “infant phenomenon” in the repertoire of national 
amusements? She must assuredly be “seen to be ever so 
faintly appreciated.” But there is always the possibility 
—nay, certainty, as we have shown—that she will be 
seen too much; that she will step outside her rightful 
bounds, and, in addition to visualizing everything on the 
earth and under it, attempt to render on the flat canvas of 
the picture hall what is only proper to the pulpit, the 
story-book or the stage. It is useless to expect that she 
will lightly abandon the exploitation of the most primitive 
humours and emotions, for these have acclaimed her more 
than all, and her colossal fortune has been largely built 
up on them. Maturing immune, for the most part, from 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


77 


criticism, she has fattened on the adulation of a “kept” 
press, and reaped if anything an increased harvest of cop¬ 
pers out of the strictures administered by prudes on the 
prowl. Can we be surprised, therefore, that with such 
guidance Miss Cinema has hardened into a rather impos¬ 
sible young lady, with vulgar habits, blatant manners, and 
commonplace thoughts and ideas? 

And, yet, with all her tawdriness who can fail to do 
homage to the taking ways and truly marvellous talent 
of the “infant phenomenon” when she is on her right lines 
—as a revealer of the wonders of nature, the inventions 
of man, and the more dramatically spectacular part of the 
human panorama? For instance, the cinema was put to 
admirable use in illustrating the journeys of Captain 
Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton in the Antarctic regions, 
and in introducing to untraveled mortals the most inter¬ 
esting scenes of Lord Allenby’s campaign in Palestine. 
In these revelations, whether we watched the gambols of 
seals and thrashers, or gazed entranced at the new Crusad¬ 
ers entering Jerusalem, was found what we could get in 
no other way, for the “movies” alone could give the pic¬ 
ture of motion which is essential to a full representation 
of life and action. But such a limitation of her perfor¬ 
mances is laughed out of court, we are only too sadly 
aware, by the cinema magnates who have grown rich by 
presenting her in the crudest forms of melodrama and 
horse-play comedy. That there is a limit to the public’s 
absorption of trash is shown, as we have indicated, by the 
feverish haste exhibited at the present time to secure 
screen-rights of classics in the world of fiction. What 
is going to happen when this rather wooden form of 
mimicry ceases to draw? 

The late Mr. Howells speculated some time back on 
the likelihood of the screen developing, not so much its 
narrowly educational side (which, as Mr. Shaw has 
pointed out, is restricted as a rule to showing the birth 
and growth of a lobster), as its more faery and fantastic 
elements. He hoped (faintly, it is true) to see the film 


78 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


“carrying on and beautifying the functions of the panto¬ 
mime,” and holding up to ridicule, maybe, within its strict¬ 
ly defined compass, some of the fads and foibles of so¬ 
ciety. The film as a caricaturist opens up a new and 
slightly more encouraging vista—though it is hard to re¬ 
sist the impression that many of the more serious crea¬ 
tions of the studio are really intended for caricatures even 
now. At any rate, it would not be an easy job to carica¬ 
ture them. Some one has said that the chief difference 
between “dramas'* and “comedies” on the screen is that 
“dramas” do occasionally make you laugh. Their apol¬ 
ogists do their best to complete the joke when they 
solemnly explain the “message” of the film; while the 
censor, appointed by the trade itself to inscribe the pass¬ 
word on these portentous absurdities, constitutes the top¬ 
most crown of hilarity. ITis position has just been ren¬ 
dered more anomalous than ever by the action of pro¬ 
paganda filmists who, knowing that he has no real au¬ 
thority, have not troubled to appeal to it. 

All censorships may be bad, but there is vastly more to 
be said for one that has all the King’s horses and men 
behind it than for one that is maintained only to do the 
bidding of the business it is supposed to control, and, 
when it develops a conscience, can be defied at will. 

A better thing may one day be made to shine in the 
rays of this magic lantern than any we have yet seen. 
But several silly conventional notions will have to be 
dropped, and one or two inelastic facts thoroughly real¬ 
ized, before it can struggle into light. The first truth to 
be insisted upon in regard to the aspirations of the cinema 
is that it cannot, in any sense, be considered as an artistic 
competitor of the theater; and the next is that it could 
not survive for a single week as a paying proposition 
without the artful aid of music. Though it borrows from 
the drama, and sucks much of its life-blood from the 
library, the cinema has existed, and could conceivably 
continue to exist, without these sources of inspiration. But 
it is unthinkable-—certainly unbearable—when unaccom- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


79 


panied by the strains of piano, organ, or viol. Whatever 
drastic changes may come about in the “silent drama,” 
nobody is likely to propose that it should be exhibited in 
the silent cinema. From the days of the one ill-tuned 
instrument down to these times, when not a few people 
go just to shut their eyes and listen to the selections per¬ 
formed by an elaborate orchestra, the pictures have 
always been attended closely by their handmaid, harmony. 
When the band strikes, the operator may as well lay down 
tools along with them, for the eye refuses to be strained 
for long while the ear is starved. Soulless though they 
be, the pictures can often be visited, and even enjoyed, 
if Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Tschaikowsky, and Coleridge 
Taylor (to name only four of the great cinema favorites) 
are there to help them out. But, if anybody doubts their 
complete lifelessness when divorced from their natural 
mate, music, let him attend the private projection rooms 
of the makers or renters, and sit out a few thousand feet 
of film melodrama with no sound but the buzz and click¬ 
ing of the machine. 

It is here perhaps that we have struck the pathway 
which Miss Cinema, guided by clever hands, may follow- 
in the future to her own advantage, and our own more 
unreserved approbation. The skilful combination of 
music and pictures may result in a new and delightful 
variation of opera, by which the eye, ear, and the intellect 
may be equally charmed. The Russian Ballet, for instance, 
would lend itself admirably to such a form of reproduc¬ 
tion. But such a revolution in the quality and outlook of 
the cinema presupposes something very like a revolution 
in the.spirit animating those whom Mr. Maurice Hewlett 
has styled the cinema “undertakers.” And, though there 
are certainly a few welcome signs of that change of heart 
here and there, it cannot be denied that, in the main, 
Miss Cinema is still in thrall to commercial adventurers 
with no artistic standard above that of the traveling booth, 
and no desire to advance a single inch until pushed by 
public indifference or digust. 


8o 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 

In their hands the “infant phenomenon’’ has perpe¬ 
trated an immense falsification of human life and its is¬ 
sues, and under the guise of “psychology,” “problem,” 
and “propaganda,” has added enormously to the mass of 
sentimental or debasing rubbish which is always at hand 
to warp the intelligence and judgment of the crowd. 

Perhaps, after all, the power of pictures, either to 
teach or to suggest, is very limited. But the humbug cir¬ 
culated about their “mission” in this direction is certainly 
unlimited, and on the increase. If it were only frankly 
recognized that the border-line between the decent and 
the indecent in this amusement is plainly marked, and that 
the film-play, like the Restoration play according to 
Lamb, represents “only a speculative state of things, 
which has no relation to the world as it is,” the cinemato¬ 
graph might begin to work wonders in the realm of im¬ 
agination as well as in the realm of exploration and in¬ 
vention, where it has lately brought off so many success¬ 
ful coups. But let it attempt what it will, the business of 
photographic, and not psychologic, realism will always 
remain its rightful job. 

WHY ATTACK BOOKS ? 1 

Why is it that the proposed body who are to look out 
for our literary morals do not go after our plays and 
movies? I have seen movies that would curl your hair, in 
spite of the motion picture censorship we are supposed 
to have. “One Arabian Night” is such a picture. I am 
not saying that there is anything in it that should be sup¬ 
pressed, but I do say that there are more things there 
to attract the censor than in the books that have been 
attacked. 

Why attack books ? Why books ? 

The censors cannot really attack the movies because 
such enormous amounts of money are back of them. 
They cannot attack the biggest publishers. They know 

1 Theodore Preiser. Independent, no: 191. March 17, 1923. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


Si 


if they attack a wealthy corporation they will have 
eighteen detectives and seventy-five lawyers on their trail. 
1 know an instance where such an attack was attempted 
and this was exactly what happened. The attack was im¬ 
mediately stopped. The would-be censor was afraid. 

CENSORSHIP OF THE MOVIES 1 

Motion pictures are visited daily by ten million people 
in the United States and one million two hundred and 
fifty thousand in the state of New York. These are the 
figures quoted by authorities in the industry and explain 
the widespread interest in the movies as a part of Ameri¬ 
can daily life. This industry with $1,250,000,000 invested 
is now regarded as the fifth largest in the country. Its 
phenomenal growth has taken place within the past ten 
years, beginning with the introduction of the five-reel 
picture. Because of technical improvements made in the 
various departments of the business, the movies appeal to 
all classes and all ages and their novelty contributes largely 
to their rapid and wonderful success. It has become ap¬ 
parent to students of psychology and to thoughtful men 
and women of affairs that this remarkable form of enter¬ 
tainment carries with it a grave menace to the welfare of 
many of its patrons as well as to the interests of the state. 

Within a short period after the introduction of the 
five-reeler, movements organized by leading men and 
women of various communities succeeded in bringing 
about some official examination of pictures before their 
presentation to the public. Pennsylvania. Ohio. Kansas, 
and Maryland followed many municipalities in enacting- 
legislation providing for legal regulation of the movies. 
Notwithstanding bitter opposition on the part of the in¬ 
dustry, an opposition that did not hesitate to spend vast 
sums of money to combat this regulatory movement, large 
numbers of. additional communities throughout the coun¬ 
try provided for supervision, and in 1921 New York state, 

1 Jiy Joseph Lcvcnson. Forum. 69: 1404-14. April, 1923. 


82 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


the most important center of the industry for motion pic¬ 
ture exhibition purposes, after several years of agitation 
enacted regulatory legislation, and in 1922 Virginia and 
Florida followed suit. 

An amusing sidelight on the movement for this legisla¬ 
tion is the use of the term “censorship” by the motion pic¬ 
ture industry, as well as by the newspapers. The word 
has been deliberately chosen by the opponents of this leg¬ 
islation for the purpose of making it unpopular with 
Americans, particularly with those of foreign birth, to 
whom the term “censorship” brings back pictures of 
gendarmes, soldiers and police, prying into their private 
affairs. The fact is that legislation in most cases is regu¬ 
latory and this is particularly true of New York where 
the standards are established by law and not by the Sta¬ 
tion Motion Picture Commission. Members of the com¬ 
mission do nothing else but guide themselves by the stat¬ 
ute when reviewing pictures. 

Notwithstanding bitter legal attacks carried on by 
the industry with the help of some of America’s leading 
lawyers, testing the constitutionality of regulator}' laws, 
the courts have sustained practically all legislation—some 
of the contests being carried to the Supreme Court of the 
United States. A few months ago an effort was made to 
test the constitutionality of the New York law permitting 
the examination of new reels, the industry maintaining 
that new reels were a form of publication and that the 
constitutional guarantee of free press permitted exhibi¬ 
tion of such new reels without examination by the state. 
The question was argued before the Appellate Division of 
the Third Department of the state of New York, and 
Judge Harold J. Hinman in an opinion unanimously con¬ 
curred in by his four colleagues, held that the motion pic¬ 
ture 

is a spectacle of show rather than a medium of opinion and the 
latter quality is a mere incident to the former quality. It creates 
and purveys a mental atmosphere which is absorbed by the 
viewer without conscious mental effort. It requires neither 
literacy nor interpreter to understand it. Those who witness 
the spectacle are taken out of bondage to the letter and the 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


8.3 


spoken word. The author and the speaker are replaced by the 
actor of the show and of the spectacle. . . Our public libraries 
are filled with books which without the necessary literacy stand 
uninterpreted and equally dead in the field of thought as an 
organ of opinion. The newspaper offers no particular attrac¬ 
tion to the child and much that is contained in it that might 
be harmful to the child is not understood by it for lack of 
literacy or imagination. But the moving picture attracts the 
attention so lacking with books or even with newspapers, par¬ 
ticularly so far as children and the illiterate are concerned, and 
carries its own interpretation. 

With this opinion borne in mind, it can be easily under¬ 
stood that the motion picture unlike the spoken play, the 
printed book or newspaper, requires state supervision and 
control. 

To appreciate the need of movie legislation, it is im¬ 
portant to bear in mind the classes that make up the great 
majority of the attendance at motion picture theaters. A 
study of these classes discloses that the movies attract in 
large numbers those who lack the means of deriving 
pleasure from a good play or good reading matter and 
who are unable to concentrate their minds for anv length 
of time on matters requiring much thought. This accounts 
for the popularity of the picture with children who form 
a very important and numerically large part of the audi¬ 
ences of most moving picture theaters. 

Professor Samuel B. Heckman, a distinguished psy¬ 
chologist of the faculty of the College of the City of New 
York, has this to say as to the influence of the picture on 
the mind of the child: 

One of the characteristics which mark the difference between 
children and adults is in their reaction; is that the imagination 
is less modified, is less controlled in relation to realities. That 
is, the experiences of children are frequently enlarged or mag¬ 
nified sometimes out of proportion to the thing that really 
happened. . . 

Another characteristic difference is that lack of control. An¬ 
other, and probably the most important of the differences be¬ 
tween childhood and grown-up life, is that inability, particularly 
as it refers to the screen picture, to see a story through to 
the end. The child is impressed by the single picture, the single 
.scene and the activities it portrays and fails, nearly always, to 
evaluate those pictures and those scenes to the story as a whole. 
That is an influence which bears upon their lives. 


84 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


A film story which may contain some picture of lawlessness 
or murder, may be accepted by the intelligent adult as a justi¬ 
fiable moral picture, because in the end justice prevails, and the 
criminal, if he is one, is punished. But what impressed the 
child during that picture was the bravado, the kind of activity 
which the individual engaged in while performing that particular 
act, and that is what influences his life; he doesn’t carry it 
through to the end to get the justification of the act in its whole 
setting. 

According to the census of 1920, the number of chil¬ 
dren in the United States ranging from five to fourteen 
years inclusive, was twenty-two million nine hundred and 
thirty-nine thousand and the number ranging in age from 
fifteen to twenty inclusive, was eleven million two 
hundred and twelve thousand. The figures for New York 
state show that the number ranging in age from five to 
twenty years was three million one hundred and twenty- 
six thousand. Practically all of these children go to the 
movies, some with parental consent and some without, 
and the influence of the picture on the minds of these 
children is the answer to the opponents of legal super¬ 
vision of pictures. 

In addition to children, the audiences at motion pic¬ 
ture theaters consist of large numbers of illiterates who 
cannot read or write a syllable of any language, the igno¬ 
rant who can barely read and write and the mental defec¬ 
tives of all degrees, who, according to scientific opinion, 
constitute fully 10 per cent of the population of the coun¬ 
try. 

While a great deal has been written about the value of 
the mental tests applied by the government during the 
late World War, there can be no doubt that such tests 
have established beyond question that America has an 
enormous proportion of unintelligent adults. Professor 
Henry Herbert Goddard, in his book, “Human Efficiency 
and Levels of Intelligence,” states that a study of these 
government tests shows that about 45 per cent of the 
one million seven hundred thousand soldiers to whom the 
tests were applied, were below normal intelligence. Even 
if these figures are inaccurate and the tests unsatisfac- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


85 


tory, we cannot get away from the fact that our sub¬ 
normal population is so large that with possession of suf¬ 
frage, they constitute a grave menace to our country. 

An interesting indication of the number of unintelli¬ 
gent and disinterested electors is clear from a study of 
the figures of the vote cast on several amendments sub¬ 
mitted to the people of the state of New York in 1921 
and in 1922. In the former year on an amendment sub¬ 
mitted in accordance with constitutional provision, asking 
for authority to sell old Erie Canal lands and which had 
no negative, there were five hundred and fifty-three 
thousand people who voted “No” while one million one 
hundred and twenty-four thousand electors voted blank, 
indicated that they did not understand or were not inter¬ 
ested, the affirmative receiving only seven hundred and 
eighty-one thousand votes. The total vote cast for Judge 
of Court of Appeals at the same election was two million 
six hundred and thirty-four thousand. This was again' 
illustrated in 1922 when there was a total vote cast in 
New York for Governor of two million five hundred and 
and eighty-nine thousand while on an amendment to the 
constitution, which simply provided for some technical 
change in the method of returning city bills to the legisla¬ 
ture and which also had no negative, there were five hun¬ 
dred and fifty-five thousand people who voted “No,” al¬ 
most one million voted blank, and two hundred and 
twenty thousand who voted for the Governor failed to 
vote at all, with the affirmative receiving eight hundred 
and twenty thousand votes. These figures show what a 
small proportion voted with an intelligent knowledge of 
the question submitted to them. 

Our system of government depends on an intelligent 
electorate. If we are to permit the illiterate and unin¬ 
telligent to become the majority and swav our elections, 
our form of government is doomed. It was fear of this 
that brought about the establishment of our public school 
system upon which billions have been spent. Nowhere 
is a teacher permitted to have charge of the mental and 


86 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


moral welfare of children unless such teacher qualifies by 
passing rigorous tests. The motion picture is conceded 
to he far more influential as an educational factor than is 
the teacher, yet it is contended that this great force for 
education should be permitted to do its work without 
any supervision provided by law. 

The movement for the control of the movies which 
has developed within the past few years has spread over 
the world. England, India, Australia, Czecho-Slovakia, 
Sweden, Italy, Honduras, the Philippine Islands, Ger¬ 
many, Poland, the provinces of Canada and the cities of 
Japan have instituted various forms of regulatory legis¬ 
lation or “censorship” as the motion picture industry 
would term it. Nowhere has such legislation been re¬ 
pealed, once enacted. 

It is because statesmen, psychologists and teachers are 
realizing the indescribable power of the motion picture in 
molding thought, particularly with the classes already 
referred to, that motion picture regulation is now re¬ 
garded as an absolutely necessary part of the government 
of civilized countries. 

The opponents of this legislation have bitterly attacked 
all forms of regulation. One of the unfortunate features 
of their opposition in this country is their determination 
to use the power of the screen as a political factor. They 
have not hesitated to threaten punishment to all who may 
oppose them, while promising aid to those regarded as 
their friends. To strengthen themselves, they have re¬ 
cently engaged the services of a distinguished gentleman 
who retired from the President’s Cabinet, paying him an 
enormous salary, so that he may help counteract the 
strong demand for regulatory legislation. Until his em¬ 
ployment, the spokesmen against so-called censorship 
came from the industry but now, in order to hide the op¬ 
position behind a cloak of respectability, prominent min¬ 
isters, newspaper men and members of authors’ guilds are 
frequently employed to use their powers of persuasion to 
defeat all forms of legal supervision. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


87 


In the recent referendum in Massachusetts on the 
question of censorship, large amounts of money were 
spent by the industry under the leadership of its new na¬ 
tional director, to influence the electorate to vote against 
the proposed regulatory legislation. The industry boasts of 
the very large case against censorship at the referendum 
but fails to mention the vast organization it effected and 
the large amount of money spent bv it. The fact is that the 
advocates of censorship had no money, no newspaper sup¬ 
port and were unorganized, and yet secured two hundred 
and ten thousand votes, nearly 30 per cent of the total 
vote cast on the question. 

A favorite argument advanced against regulation, 
particularly during the Massachusetts campaign, has been 
that a board of three people is clothed with full power to 
decide what people should see in the movies. To those 
who know about our form of government, this argument 
seems ridiculous. We delegate all our powers to repre¬ 
sentatives authorized to do the work entrusted to them, 
subject to proper court review. In the matter of motion 
picture regulation, the right to appeal to courts has not 
been taken away from the people interested. In New 
York the law provided that “unless a film or a part there¬ 
of is obscene, indecent, immoral, inhuman, sacrilegious 
or is of such a character that its exhibition would tend 
to corrupt morals or incite to crime the commission shall 
issue a license therefor.” All advertising posters used 
for display purposes are also under the same provision of 
the law and New York is now spared the vile and disgust¬ 
ing forms of motion picture poster advertising which 
have graced the fronts of so many theaters of residential 
sections. The three commissioners are simply permitted 
to define and interpret the statute and their action is sub¬ 
ject to review by the courts. 

It is interesting to note that in New York state out of 
four thousand six hundred and ninety eliminations made 
and seventy-nine pictures condemned in their entirety 
from August 1, 1921, to December 31, 1922, there have 


88 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


been but three appeals to the courts to date, and in every 
case the commission has been unanimously sustained, 
such appeals being decided by the Appellate Division con¬ 
sisting of from five to seven judges. 

With much glee, the opponents of “censorship” point 
to what they term errors of judgment on the part of so- 
called “censors.” Admitting that errors are made, what 
of it? No one has claimed infallibility for any human 
being serving as a public official and motion picture com¬ 
missioners are no exception. Considering the millions 
of feet of films examined, it must be frankly admitted 
that examiners are apt at times to commit errors, but if 
in New York state but three appeals have been made to 
the courts, it seems to indicate that the industry has had 
but very little genuine ground for complaint. 

An argument advanced whenever control has been 
suggested, and used with great effect during the Massa¬ 
chusetts campaign, is that censorship increases the cost of 
admission to the movies. This is laughable to those bear¬ 
ing in mind the fabulous salaries paid to movie stars and 
the salary of $150,000 to a main director who is sur¬ 
rounded by a large staff of high-salaried assistants, oc¬ 
cupying palatial Fifth Avenue offices. 

The Motion Picture Commission of the State of New 
York for the year of 1922 had a total income of $154,000. 
As the attendance at motion picture theaters averages at 
least one million persons per day, the cost of censorship 
per single admission, paid by the producers, amounted to 
less than one-twentieth of one cent. The state made a 
profit of $72,000 on the work of the commission for the 
year of 1922. 

The ancient cry of interference with personal liberty 
is frequently used by the movie interests. Of course, 
motion picture regulation, like other laws, interferes with 
somebody’s personal liberty. The director and the pro¬ 
ducer who prepare a picture showing obscenity and filth 
and whose work is eliminated, are justified in shouting 
about the loss of their personal liberty. So is every 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


89 


individual justified who has been brought before the bar 
of justice because of a violation of law. 

In the Massachusetts campaign, the motion picture 
people cleverly stated that their opposition was to state 
censorship and not to Federal censorship, an argument 
which, no doubt, influenced quite a large proportion of 
the electorate. They knew very well that Federal censor¬ 
ship is something that may come in the dim and distant 
future. Even if enacted, it might have effect, as did the 
Federal legislation barring prize fight pictures which have 
been shown in various states notwithstanding the legis¬ 
lation, by the mere pleading of guilty and the payment of 
a nominal sum as a fine. 

A distinguished Protestant clergyman of Brooklyn, 
successor to one of America's most famous pulpit orators, 
in trying to prove how odious is “censorship” of the 
“movies” has referred to the censorship of Czaristic Rus¬ 
sia. He evidently did not know that very recently the 
Republic of Poland, although under socialist control, and 
but a few years free from centuries of despotism under 
the Czars, has enacted motion picture censorship and the 
reason advanced is that practically all the pictures shown 
in Poland are American made and are destructive of the 
moral standards of its people because of indecent, sacri¬ 
legious and crime-inciting matter they contain. Reports 
recently received state that Soviet Russia has provided 
for motion picture censorship. 

A distinguished authoress whose contributions to the 
leading American periodicals have attracted favorable 
attention and some of which have been screened, has been 
speaking in opposition to motion picture regulation. Yet, 
in the state of New York, it was necessary to eliminate 
from one of the recent picture successes, based on a story 
of hers, scenes of disgusting sexual degeneracy injected 
into the picture by a noted director as his conception of 
the debauchery and degradation of Ancient Rome. It is 
only fair to say that the scenes were born of the director’s 
imagination and did not appear in the story. 


90 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


In New York, the chief value of the law has been that 
it has served in the main as a preventative. The directors 
and motion picture people have been unwilling - to invest 
large sums of money in productions which they feared 
might meet with rejection. 

Another valuable result of the law has been the con¬ 
structive work done by the commission. \ ery many 
pictures or scenes condemned aroused heart-breaking 
wailing from the interested parties because of the finan¬ 
cial losses and “the throttling of genius and the restric¬ 
tion of art.” After the changes were made, the commis¬ 
sion learned that those interested frankly admitted that 
the picture had a more salable value and were far better 
in an artistic way. 

The New York commission has been eliminating all 
obnoxious references to various religious and racial 
groups, a policy that has met with universal approval. 
Pictures have been presented particularly objectionable to 
religious groups. One case portraying a nun’s violation 
of her holy vows, although not strictly sacriligious was 
changed by the owner at the suggestion of the commis¬ 
sion, a course which delighted Catholic church dignitaries. 
In some cases, complaints reached the commission from 
the Anti-defamation League, a subsidiary organization 
of a large Jewish fraternal order, about pictures that were 
particularly obnoxious to many Jews. It may interest 
some people to know that such Jewish pictures were 
made by Jewish motion picture concerns. Complaint too 
has been made about productions portraying Protestant 
ministers in an improper light. The commission has in¬ 
terested itself to improve such pictures to meet objec¬ 
tions. 

Legal regulation of the screen may have its short¬ 
comings but based on the experience of the last decade, 
it must be apparent to the unbiased that resort to law to 
eliminate indecent theatrical performances has had un¬ 
satisfactory results. The experience in New York city 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


9i 


<1 tiring' the past two seasons shows clearly that the legal 
technicalities involved make it almost impossible to pre¬ 
vent salacious performances until long after the damage 
to the community has been accomplished. It is clear too 
that the contention of the motion picture interests that the 
law gives ample power to eliminate that which is immoral 
oi obscene and that the public should he censors is one 
based on an expectation that if the present motion picture 
law be repealed, they will be free of the only restrictions 
that can make them bow to the moral sentiment of the 
commu nit v. 

The motion picture industry, aided by interests that are 
financially affected, stands practically alone in its opposi¬ 
tion to motion picture regulation. No doubt there is some 
honest opposition on the part of well-meaning men and 
women who fear that so-called “censorship" is at vari¬ 
ance with the American conception of freedom. Experi¬ 
ence, however, is the best answer to such honest opposi¬ 
tion. The same issues were involved in the agitation 
that went on for years in reference to the liquor question 
in America. Public would never have accepted prohibi¬ 
tion if it had not been for the great army of saloon keep¬ 
ers who, blind to American moral sentiment, deliberately 
violated laws, using their power for political purposes, 
and who did not hesitate on pay days to send their .cus¬ 
tomers home to their families without a penny in their 
pockets. It was this wanton violation of all that was de¬ 
cent that resulted in prohibition and not the desire to 
make men stop drinking alcoholic beverages. The 
motion picture industry should learn a lesson from the 
experience of America with saloons. Should the men 
who control the screen succeed in thwarting the moral 
sentiment of the community, they will find themselves in 
opposition to millions of parents and others interested in 
child welfare and the development of a healthy, moral and 
religions sentiment in the state. If the producers can again 
have untrammeled power to show the vicious, lewd and 


92 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


sacrilegious without restraint, they will find that instead 
of having benefited by the repeal of legislation, they will 
have paved the way for wholesale boycott of their pro¬ 
ductions by the best elements of every community. 

WORD OR TWO FROM THE CENSOR 1 
Houston, Texas 

It—censorship—is here considered of vital necessity. 
By city o (finance I have succeeded in rejecting in their 
entirety all pictures and stock plays which are built upon 
immoral themes. 

Ninety-five percent of all illicit love sequences and un¬ 
warranted infidelity on the part of married people are 
eliminated. 

Sensuality and looseness of conduct are eliminated. 

Brutality scenes and crimes, when constructive, show¬ 
ing the actual technic of operation are eliminated. 

Scenes in which the placing of explosives for the pur¬ 
pose of working destruction to humanity and property 
are eliminated. 

Unrestrained mob violence scenes are modified or 
eliminated entirely. 

Actual hangings and holdup scenes are eliminated. 

All disregard or disrespect for law—by sub-title or 
scene—are eliminated. 

Racial encouragement or racial prejudice are elimi¬ 
nated. 

The word God, wherever used without reverence or 
improperly, is eliminated. 

Any offensive reference to church or religious de¬ 
nominations is eliminated. 

Over and over again all the above have been removed 
from time to time, from the screen and from the spoken 
stage in our city bv the local censorship board. I have 

1 By Mrs. Thomas H. Eggert, Secretary, Houston, Texas, Censor Board. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


93 


twenty-eight picture show houses, three “vode” houses 
and three stock houses under my supervision and 
from shows in all the above-stated offenses can be elim¬ 
inated almost any time upon initial showing. 

Censorship in our city is a proven safeguard for the 
amusement loving people against the commercialized 
amusement interests. 


Virginia 1 

We have found it necessary on an average to cut or 
delete eleven out of every one hundred pictures. Some of 
these deletions were trivial, but others necessitated the re¬ 
moval of scenes and sub-titles that were most objection¬ 
able. 

Although we are conservative in our attitude toward 
films, we have come to believe that censorship is a neces¬ 
sary thing. 


Chicago 2 

I not only believe but I know that not all moving pic¬ 
tures produced should be shown to children because 
there are some great moral lessons often depicted through 
sex hygiene pictures dealing with the social evil and social 
diseases. Necessarily the display of such films should be 
restricted. Then, too, there are numerous so-called 
comedies which are often not only extremely vulgar but 
obscene, and often are so changed by means of careful 
eliminations as to be absolutely harmless. After studying 
conditions for the past five or six years and reviewing on 
the average of twenty-five to thirty thousand feet of film 
eight hours each day, I am convinced that the necessity 
for censorship of moving pictures is something not to be 
discounted. 

3 By Evan R. Chesterman, Chairman, Virginia State Board of Censors. 

2 By Amy Louise Adams, Chairman of Chicago Moving Picture Censor¬ 
ship Committee. 


94 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


New York State 1 

In the first place, it is conceded by the best producers, 
and particularly by Mr. Will H. Hays and his organiza¬ 
tion that many of the pictures have exercised a very un¬ 
wholesome influence particularly upon children and 
people of inferior intellectual capacity. They plead guilty 
to the charge made by the public and claim that it is due 
to the fact that the industry is young and people have 
gone into the business who have little regard for 
the character of the film and are only interested in the 
returns which they may receive from its exhibition. The 
feeling is widespread that many of the films teach methods 
of crime, showing all the details concerning it, contain 
immoral and salacious suggestions and matter and, as a 
whole, tend to corrupt morals. 

Statistics show that practically one-tenth of the popu¬ 
lation of the United States see motion pictures daily. 
There is no agency that exercises such wide influence and 
affects the lives of so many people as the motion picture. 
Owing to the character of the pictures and the extent of 
the influence which they exercise, a very widespread de¬ 
mand for improvement of the same has arisen. Several 
states have adopted laws to regulate the industry and im¬ 
prove the character of the pictures. Our commission 
went into existence on August 1st, 1921 and there has 
been a decided improvement in the pictures presented for 
license. Of course, Mr. Hays contends that this improve¬ 
ment has resulted through the efforts of the motion pic¬ 
ture people themselves to clean up the screen as he ex¬ 
presses it. \\ e know that the improvement is due to the 
fact that a commission exists which eliminates objection¬ 
able pictures, and the producers know that they will suffer 
large losses if they present to us unwholesome pictures. 
Of course, they do in some instances and we order elim¬ 
inations. It is not necessary to condemn in their entirety 

1 By George II. Cobh, Chairman, New York State Motion Picture 
Commission. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


95 


many of the pictures, but we do make quite extensive 
eliminations. 

STATE CENSORSHIP OF MOTION PICTURES 1 

I he New \ ork State Conference of Mayors and 
Other City Officials at their meeting in the fall of 1919 
adopted a resolution authorizing the appointment of an 
official committee to investigate all phases of the regula¬ 
tion of motion pictures and report at a subsequent meet¬ 
ing of the organization. 

Pursuant to this action a committee was appointed bv 
Mayor Stone of Syracuse. This committee held three 
sessions—one in New York and two at Albany. Four 
sub-committees were appointed—namely, on local regu¬ 
lation, existing laws, on the National Board of Review 
and on state censorship. 

On February 24, 1920, a complete report of the com¬ 
mittee was presented by its chairman, Mayor Palmer 
Canfield, of Kingston. Copies of the report may be ob¬ 
tained from Mr. William P. Capes, secretary of the New 
York State Conference of Mayors and Other City Offi¬ 
cials, Albany, N.Y. 

The report contains the following statement: 

STATE CENSORSHIP OF MOTION PICTURES 

The sub-committee to investigate state censorship 
made a comprehensive and very able report. The com¬ 
mittee gave substantial reasons for their conclusions as 
follows: 

Legalized censorship of the film is a dangerous departure in 
a free country. It is no less dangerous • than a censorship of 
the press or the stage, for it places a ban upon ideas. The 
ndecent, improper and immoral film can be eradicated by the 
same methods as are used against indecent, improper and im¬ 
moral books or plays. It may make the passing of films a 
matter of political influence and result in consequent abuses of 

1 Reprinted and distributed by the National Board of Review of Motion 
Pictures, New York. 


0 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


power. It does not reflect public opinion, but merely the per¬ 
sonal views of the censors themselves. The experiment which 
has been tried in other states does not warrant New York 
making such a radical departure from the principles upon which 
our government is founded. Nor does there appear to be the 
necessity for that departure. Great as has been the improvement 
of the film in recent years, it would be greater and more rapid 
were the menace of censorship eliminated and the art allowed 
to develop along its natural lines, governed by common sense 
and the good taste of the American people. 

The full report on state censorship considers exhaus¬ 
tively, as follows the principles involved: 


Report of Sub-committee on State Censorship 

To the Special Committee of the State Conference 
of Mayors and Other City Officials on the Regula¬ 
tion of Motion Pictures: 

Your sub-committee, appointed to inquire into and 
report upon state censorship of motion picture films, 
desires to submit the following report:— 

It is unalterably opposed to any form of state censor¬ 
ship of films for the following reasons:— 


The Basic Principle of Censorship Is Un-American 

Free thought and its free expression in speech or 
through the medium of the press, the pulpit, the forum, 
the stage and the screen is a right guaranteed to every 
American citizen by the Federal Constitution. Our 
fathers fled the Old World to gain freedom for the ex¬ 
pression of their religious and political beliefs. Free 
speech, a free press and a free stage have become, and 
must ever remain, an inviolable part of the American 
ideal. 

So firmly is that principle grounded in our national life 
that not only the Federal Constitution, but also every 
state Constitution guarantees it, and every citizen is 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


97 


granted the right of free expression in speech or in print, 
being held responsible only for the abuse of that right. 
The screen has attained a dignity akin to that of the 
stage and to the printed page. It should be entitled to 
the same privileges and liable to the same penalties. If 
it sins it should be punished in the same way as the stage 
or the press is punished and to neither a greater nor a 
lesser extent. 

Film censorship inflicts punishment before the sin is 
committed, and it is a blow at civil liberty quite as deadly 
as censorship of the press, for the film is not only a 
medium of entertainment, but also a news and educational 
medium quite as universal as the magazine or the news¬ 
paper. Should America surrender her free theater, which 
means a free screen, she might as well give up her free 
press, her free speech and her freedom of assemblage. 
I'he one might well lead to the other. Legislation tend¬ 
ing toward any such restriction is thoroughly pernicious 
and in the end will destroy personal responsibility, distort 
the public mind and hamper its development and stunt the 
vital growth of education. 

Censorship of speech, of press, pulpit or stage has ever 
been the distinguishing mark of despotism. Freedom in 
the expression of thought is the cornerstone of democ¬ 
racy. 

Censorship Is a Backward Step in the Progress of 

Civilization 

The greatness of any country is measured by the 
greatness of its art and its literature. To quote the Earl 
of Lytton, “The social civilization of a people is always 
and infallibly indicated bv the intellectual character of its 
popular amusements." 

To restrict the free development and expression of the 
newest of arts through censorship is a step backward 
toward the dark ages. Censorship burned the Bible; for 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


08 


a whole generation censorship kept from the French 
people all knowledge of Newton’s discovery of terrestrial 
magnetism. Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa’’ was pro¬ 
nounced by a professor of the University of London to 
be “one of the most actively evil pictures ever painted.” 
When Guttenberg invented the printing press prototypes 
of the present proponents of censorship succeeded in sup¬ 
pressing the printed word for many years. The motion 
picture is a process of recording thought without the use 
of printer’s ink and is perhaps as great an advance over 
printing as Guttenberg’s invention was over the quill pen. 
A censorship of the one is no less dangerous than a cen¬ 
sorship of the other. 

Censorship Is Fundamentally Wrong 

It has been aptly said that motion picture censorship 
is the latest device for making us moral by act of legisla¬ 
tion and is a futile effort to correct nature, which gave 
us five senses and but one conscience. Certainly it is an 
assumption by political authority, not of the regulation of 
conduct, but of the regulation of thought. 

Is it right or politic to select any three, any ten or 
any hundred men and women, however pure, however 
wise, however blessed with genius, and endow them with 
the power to set the moral standards of twelve million 
people? If so, would that standard be the same today 
as tomorrow? Would it be the same in one locality as 
another? It would not, should not, be the same, for that 
which may be injurious to the public good in one locality 
or at one time may be harmless in another place or at 
another day. Will the legislature of the state of New 
York in its wisdom define what is objectionable, what is 
contrary to the public weal, in a film? We know that it 
will not. Why, then, should that definition be left to 
others? Why should another body of citizens, of no 
greater intelligence or aesthetic perception, be given the 
power to enforce its opinions upon the rest of the people? 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


99 


We possess the right to select our religious, our po¬ 
litical beliefs, our newspapers, books, operas and plays, 
but a film censorship law would take from us the right 
to select our motion pictures and permit us to see only 
those which appealed to the censors. 

hew impulses ecjual the passion to impose our own 
views upon our neighbors, to regulate their morals in con¬ 
formity with our own. Censorship results from the de¬ 
termination of the few to impose their views upon the 
many. While it is true that liberty of any sort, even 
freedom of speech, is liable to abuse, there are safeguards 
against this, and he who is guilty of such abuse must be 
held responsible. It is quite another matter to try to pre¬ 
vent the possibility of such abuse beforehand by surren¬ 
dering both freedom and responsibility to a legalized 
board, however constituted. 

Censorship Will Ever Remain Unsatisfactory 

Censorship is bound to be unsatisfactory until that 
time when all people observe life through the same 
glasses. One man is shocked at what another considers 
beautiful. What was indecent yesterday may be decent 
today or vice versa. Immorality, indecency, are general 
terms; they cannot be defined with mathematical certain¬ 
ty. Thev varv with environment. They mav be matters 
of latitude and longitude. Pictures of bathing girls ex¬ 
cite no comment at seaside resorts; they may not be 
viewed with the same indifference in the prairie states. 
The Eskimo woman warms the half frozen feet of her 
husband upon her naked body in a manner to shock her 
white sister, and what is wifely devotion in Etah is gross 
indecency in Utah. 

State censorship is bound to be unsatisfactory also for 
the reason that there can be no exact limitations to its 
scope. There can be no point beyond which it may not 
be carried, nor can there be a uniformity of standards 
among the states permitting it. 


100 


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Given a censorship of films in forty-five states of the 
Union and we would have the amazing and impossible 
situation of forty-five different kinds of morality. That 
which is decent and moral in New York city might be 
indecent and immoral in Hoboken; that which is contrary 
to the public good in Kansas City, Missouri, might well 
be in complete accord with the civil welfare of Kansas 
City, Kansas, depending wholly upon the rulings of local 
boards. Could any art, any industry, live under such 
conditions? Inhibitions, restrictions, conflicts of such a 
nature would have murdered literature or painting or the 
drama generations ago. Can an art as new as the motion 
picture live under them ? 

A proposal of state censorship implies that the moot 
question of what is decent and what is indecent shall be 
left, not to public opinion, but to the judgment of a com¬ 
mission of three or five or some other number of political 
appointees. Will there be anything sacrosanct about such 
a board of censors? No. They can be no more than a 
body of non-expert guardians of public morals ; a sore and 
a needless irritation to the public. 


Censorship Is More Than Apt to be Swayed by 

Politics 

The motion picture reaches more people and influ¬ 
ences more profoundly their thoughts and ideals than per¬ 
haps any other agency. It is a potent educational force 
and one of the most efficient mediums for the expression 
of thought. To pass over its control to a politically ap¬ 
pointed board is a step fraught with danger. Such boards 
are bound to respond to that force which gave them 
being. 

It is claimed that political influence engendered by 
a considerable negro vote in southern Ohio, prevented 
the showing of “The Birth of a Nation” in that state. In 
Pennsylvania, where the negro vote is not a factor on 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


IOI 


election day, the censors passed the picture. In Ohio and 
Pennsylvania the censorship boards eliminated from the 
news films all pictures of the recent coal strike. Labor 
leaders feel that this was a blow at them and that it was 
struck by the mine owners, who were able to exert the 
political influence necessary to bring - about the elimina¬ 
tion of the pictures. 

Charles E. Hughes, in 1916, denounced the censorship 
of films as un-American and intolerable. His words were 
printed in the newspapers of Kansas: nevertheless, the 
censors of that state forbade the quotation to be shown on 
the screen, thus proving that mere vanity may sway the 
judgment of super-moralists. The police censors of Chi¬ 
cago eliminated the picture of a policeman borrowing 
peanuts from a stand, alleging as reason that it tended to 
lessen public respect for the guardians of the law. At 
the same time, as a later exposure revealed, wholesale 
grafting by the police was under way. 

Censorship Would Retard the Development of the 

Motion Picture 

The motion picture is a new art, and it should enjoy 
the same freedom of expression as the other arts. What 
would our literature, our sculpture, our painting be to¬ 
day if every book before publication had been submitted 
to a censor with absolute powers of approval, rejection 
and elimination? Or if only such statues and canvases 
were permitted to live in our galleries as had pleased a 
politically appointed board from the rural districts? What 
kind of a sermon would even our most gifted divines pre¬ 
pare if they realized that it was to be read and censored 
by a non-religious board with absolute power of rejec¬ 
tion or modification before it could be delivered from the 
pulpit? Censorship is fatal to the growth and develop¬ 
ment of any art. 

Even the teaching of history by the medium of the 
screen could well come under the ban of a board of cen- 


102 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


sors, for there is no vital period in history that may not 
arouse the prejudice of someone today. Then, too, his¬ 
tory is immoral if measured by the rulings of censorship, 
for is it not replete with crimes of violence, with instances 
of vulgarity, indecency and sin? “Joan, the Woman/' a 
great historical film, reverently treated, has never passed 
the Canadian censors. 


Censorship of the Film Is Class Legislation 

Censorship invades one field of artistic expression and 
leaves the others free. Many a story has been widely 
published in magazines, in newspapers, in book form, 
then has been dramatized for the stage. By what right 
may the motion picture producer be penalized for at¬ 
tempting to translate it to the screen? Is not the expres¬ 
sion of thought by the medium of the film entitled to the 
same protection under the law as its expression in print 
or upon the stage? 

Lazy thinkers are prone to attribute all evils to the 
motion picture. Years ago it was the dime novel which 
destroyed morality and taught our young idea how to 
shoot. Later cigarette smoking was reputed to be rapidly 
destroying our young manhood. Only a few years ago 
there was a demand for a censorship of the colored sup¬ 
plements of the Sunday papers. Wisconsin once con¬ 
sidered placing a tape measure in the hands of an official 
who was to see that “no actress or other female person 
shall appear on the stage unless properly covered by skirts 
which shall extend at least four inches below the knees.” 

The record of our boys in the Argonne, at St. 
Mihiel and before the Hindenburg Line should have 
proven this much at least, that neither the uncensored 
film, the penny dreadful, the baneful cigarette, the ir¬ 
reverent funny sheet nor the short skirt has entirely 
wrecked their manhood and reduced them to moral 
and physical weaklings. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


103 


Censorship Cannot Usurp the Functions or 
Exercise the Duties of Motherhood 

The great argument used by the advocates of cen¬ 
sorship is that we must protect the child, and to ac¬ 
complish that desirable end it is proposed to reduce 
the intellectual standards of a great and potential art 
to the level of puerility. It is quite as impossible to 
bring the motion picture down to the level of the 
child as to bring literature, painting, sculpture and the 
drama down to a ten-year-old level. 

Before a mother allows her child to read a book she 
may first ascertain if it is a proper book for the child to 
read. Before she takes him to a dramatic performance 
she may assure herself that it is a proper play for him to 
attend. Not all books or plays are suitable for the infant 
mind; nevertheless we could not tolerate the repression or 
destruction of all that appeals to maturity. Rather than 
chop the motion picture down to the dimensions of the 
nursery and the kindergarten let us point out the duty 
of the mother to ascertain the nature of the film enter¬ 
tainment her child attends and turn our thoughts to 
some other method than censorship. 


The Public Is the Best Censor 

The only censorship tolerable in a free and enlight¬ 
ened country, whether of the press, the pulpit, the plat¬ 
form, the stage or the film, is the censorship of the 
people. That censorship, as exercised by the ten mil¬ 
lion people who daily attend our motion picture thea¬ 
ters, has proven sane and efficient. Pictures have 
shown a marked and steady improvement in tone and 
character during the most critical period of their 
growth, and that improvement seems bound to con¬ 
tinue, since the great majority of producers are op¬ 
posed to suggestiveness, obscenity and salaciousness 
in anv form. By the very nature of the business of 


104 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


motion pictures meretriciousness and indecency defeat 


themselves. 

The penal codes of our cities and states are suffi¬ 
ciently broad, if invoked and enforced, amply to pro¬ 
tect the citizens, young or old, against anything on 
the screen which in the opinion of properly constituted 
authorities is debasing or unclean. Not until the ad¬ 
ministration of the criminal law has failed and our 
courts have proven themselves incapable of coping 
with infractions thereof should censorship be seriously 


considered. 


The Ann. i cat ion of Censorship Results in 

Absurdities 

A study of censorship eliminations shows the ab¬ 
surdities of the system. “Carmen” was rejected in 
three states for three different reasons. Apropos of 
this, Channing Pollock in an article on censorship 
wrote as follows: 

Considering that it is forty years since first she mouthed 
her mad love to the music of Bizet, Carmen might have ex¬ 
pected the deference due old age. Beautifully filmed and beauti¬ 
fully acted by Geraldine Farrar, she came as a bolt from the 
blue* to shocked and surprised “boards” in Ohio, Pennsylvania 
and California. Her ancient kiss, that inspired the first big press 
agent “story,” was ordered cut to five feet. “Just a little love, 
a little kiss,” warbled the Buckeyes, and nothing more than a 
yard and two-thirds of affection came within that allowance. 
“All love scenes showing embraces between males and females” 
were ordered measured and trimmed, leaving the cigarette maker 
to give her life for a purely paternal peck from the bashful 
bull-fighter, Escamillo. 

The writer declares, however, that Carmen was not 
permitted to give her life in Ohio nor in California, 
since a local board objected to the killing of a woman 
by a man, although there was no objection to the 
killing of men by women, doubtless because, as he 
puts it, “girls will be girls.” 

In Ohio every picture of a woman smoking must 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


105 


be eliminated, which, of course, made the lot of the 
Spanish Carmen even more difficult. 

A certain melodrama depicted the execution of 
plans for an assassination in an isolated house, and 
showed the villain cutting - the telephone wires in fur¬ 
therance of his plans. No objection was made to the 
assassination, but the picture was censored because 
it tended to inspire small boys to tamper with wires. 

Pennsylvania prohibited the showing of a farcical 
scene in which a man burns a letter from his wife. 
To tear up the letter, it was explained, would have been 
permissible, but burning showed contempt of the mar¬ 
ital relationship. I 11 Pennsylvania no scene may be 
shown of a mother making baby clothes, the explana¬ 
tion being that children are taught that babies are 
brought by the stork. When it was argued that even 
in that event children would of necessity need cloth¬ 
ing the censors refused to change their ruling. Any 
suggestion of approaching maternity is barred, no 
doubt upon the theory that nature is too immoral for 
representation on the screen. The rulings of every 
state board are replete with absurdities quite in keep¬ 
ing with the examples above cited. 

It is the aim of censorship to bar evil scenes from 
the screen, and yet without evil good goes unobserved. 
A rigid adherence to the rulings of the existing state 
boards would prevent the illustration of so elementary 
a lesson in morals as this—viz, “The wages of sin are 
death,” for sin may not be filmed. 

Conclusion 

Legalized censorship of the film is a dangerous 
departure in a free country. It is no less dangerous 
than a censorship of the press or the stage, for it 
places a ban upon ideas. The indecent, improper and 
immoral film can be eradicated by the same methods 


io6 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


as are used against indecent, improper and immoral 
books or plays. It may make the passing of films a 
matter of political influence and result in consequent 
abuses of power. It does not reflect public opinion, 
but merely the personal views of the censors them¬ 
selves. The experiment which has been tried in other 
states does not warrant New York making such a 
radical departure from the principles upon which our 
government is founded. Nor does there appear to be 
the necessity for that departure. Great as has been 
the improvement of the film in recent years, it would 
be greater and more rapid were the menace of censor¬ 
ship eliminated and the art allowed to develop along 
its natural lines, governed by common sense and the 
good taste of the American people. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP AND 
ORGANIZED LABOR 1 

There has recently been introduced in the legisla¬ 
ture of the state of Massachusetts, and referred to the 
Committee on Mercantile Affairs, a bill to provide for 
the establishment in Massachusetts of a motion picture 
censorship. This is a measure of moment to organized 
labor. It is of the greater importance because the 
dangers involved are not generally understood and 
appreciated. 

The proposed measure was drawn up by a group 
of women chiefly, whose object is to purify the movies 
for the sake of young people. This is the principal aim 
of censorship in the four states where legalized boards 
exist. One of these states, Pennsylvania to be specific, 
is blessed by having as its paid secretary—one of its 
three members who are charged with censoring mo¬ 
tion pictures for the entire state—a gentleman who 

1 By William A. Nealey, President Massachusetts State Branch, Ameri¬ 
can Federation of Labor. Distributed by the National Board of Review 
of Motion Pictures, New York. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


107 


apparently spends a large part of the time for which 
he receives pay as a censor of motion pictures travel¬ 
ing around in the non-censorship states and trying to 
induce groups of reformers to establish boards like the 
Pennsylvania board. This person, Dr. Oberholtzer by 
name, visited Massachusetts and made some very plau¬ 
sible addresses upon the splendid work which the 
Pennsylvania censors accomplish. He illuminated his 
remarks with a description of the terrible scenes which 
they delete from motion pictures, thus saving the mor¬ 
als of the state from going to the bow-wows. Under 
the inspiration of Dr. Oberholtzer a bill has been in¬ 
troduced in Massachusetts which its sponsors claim 
possesses all the virtues of the Pennsylvania censor¬ 
ship law, plus. 

If the Pennsylvania censorship is such a splendid 
institution as to deserve emulation in this state, let 
us examine what it has done to win the thanks of the 
rank and file of Pennsylvania's population. 

In the first place, according to the Pennsylvania 
censors, children are all supposed to believe that babies 
come into the world by means of the stork. At any 
rate so long as there are a few sheltered children left 
in Pennsylvania this illusion will not be destroyed by 
the Pennsylvania Board of Censors, for they consis¬ 
tently remove from pictures any suggestion of ap¬ 
proaching maternity. For instance, a husband may 
not say to his wife that soon their home must be made 
large enough for three; a mother is not permitted to 
display the baby’s layette, nor can a woman ever be 
taken to a hospital for the purpose of giving birth to 
a child. It doesn't matter if making this alteration 
totally spoils the story. Of what importance is that 
in comparison with preserving the fairylike innocence 
of the modern child? 

Another kind of thing which is anathema with the 
Pennsylvania board is the admission that there is any 
wickedness in the world. Of course, they do find it 


io8 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


terribly difficult to keep all suggestion of this out of 
motion pictures, and the result is that many good peo¬ 
ple in Pennsylvania complain that the state board is 
not strict enough and the censors themselves are al¬ 
ways, it seems, striving to make rulings more rigid. 
It is so much better, of course, for young people to 
grow up without a knowledge of the unpleasantness 
of life. If they see upon the screen only those delight¬ 
ful stories in which are injected just enough of the 
hardships of life to make a story at all and in which 
the real, depressing realities have no place whatever, 
does it not follow that somehow or other the lives of 
the young people of Pennsylvania and their mind’s 
attitude toward life will take on the same hue and cast? 
And as for the adults, why should they seek to see 
these distasteful realities depicted on the screen ?-They, 
too, with the assistance of the Pennsylvania censors, 
it is apparently hoped, may delude themselves into the 
belief that things are better than they are. 

If the Pennsylvania censors were content to con¬ 
fine their meddlesome activities to dramatic photoplays 
it would be tragic enough indeed from the standpoint 
of the development of the motion picture art and of 
the adult public which desires adult entertainment; but 
the censors are not so content. They pass in review 
alike not only the dramatic pictures but educationals 
and even news. 

The most flagrant example of interference with 
news pictures has been the withholding by the Penn¬ 
sylvania board of scenes and captions dealing with 
the coal strike. When criticized for this action the 
Pennsylvania board defended themselves by saying 
that the governor of the state had told them to do 
this! 

That such activity is not confined to the Pennsyl¬ 
vania board, but is a recurrent characteristic of legal 
censorship, may also be seen in action of other state 
boards. For instance, in Kansas the statement of a 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


109 


presidential candidate was cut because it opposed the 
principle of censorship of the screen and the Kansas 
censors took this as reflecting* upon themselves. I 11 
another instance sections of a news picture which 
showed banners inscribed with sentiments adverse to 
another presidential candidate were deleted. Again, 
the sensitive censors forbade views of the removal of 
a dead politician's statue to appear because it had a 
rope around its neck and therefore the scenes were 
disrespectful to his memory. 

Nor are the state censors satisfied to stop at the 
news films. Scientific and educational films photo¬ 
graphed by experts in their respective subjects have 
been ruthlessly mangled in order to make educational 
pictures conform to rulings formulated for amusement 
films. Could there be a worse system than one which 
places ignorance in a position to cut and alter findings 
of scientific research? 

The further fastening of this designing, ignorant, 
irresponsible tyranny upon our free institutions would 
be a public calamity such as we have not seen since 
our nation was founded upon the principle that en¬ 
lightenment, liberty, and personal responsibility are 
the foundations of order and progress. 

The serious import of the various efiforts to extend 
motion picture censorship throughout the states of the 
Union Avas recognized at the 1916 convention of the 
American Federation of Labor, which went on record 
as opposed to legalized censorship in the following 
resolutions: 

Resolution 

Whereas, The motion picture business of this country has 
grown to such an extent, that today it not only serves as an 
agency for recreation, but has become a public agency for edu¬ 
cation and the dissemination of current information comparable 
in many respects to the daily press and public forum, which have 
a determining influence in directing and educating public thought 
and opinion; and 

Whereas, Motion pictures supplement the spoken and written 
word by a powerful appeal to the mind through the eye, and 


110 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


the event or thought to be conveyed is thereby visualized; and 

Whereas, Motion pictures must be protected by the same 
guarantees of freedom that have been bestowed upon oral ut¬ 
terance and the press; it being fundamental for the protection 
of free institutions that freedom of speech and discussion should 
be assured; for only when there exists most complete freedom 
to express thought or to criticize is there established a guarantee 
that political and other representative agents shall not assume 
or exercise the rights and authority that they do not rightfully 
possess; and 

Whereas, Freedom of speech is inseparable from free insti¬ 
tutions and the genius of free people; this freedom to be pro¬ 
tected from abuse by holding the individual responsible for his 
utterances when the same are based on fact, since legal restric¬ 
tion in advance of presentation limits research, investigation and 
inquiry for broader and deeper truths; and 

Whereas, Here, of late, efforts have been made to establish 
state and federal boards of censorship to review motion pictures, 
it being the purpose of those who propose such censorship to 
present to the public only such things as they may be permitted 
legally to see; thereby putting very dangerous authority in the 
hands of a few, for it enables the board to restrict and deter¬ 
mine the very fountain heads of information; therefore, be it 

Resolved, That the American Federation of Labor, in con¬ 
vention assembled in the city of Baltimore, register its unrelent¬ 
ing opposition to any scheme or system which denies freedom 
of speech, press, or the showing of motion pictures, when they 
are based on facts; and be it further 

Resolved, That this convention go on record as being in 
opposition to government censorship of expression of opinion 
in any form, and that we indorse again the declaration that 
freedom of speech, and the freedom of the press and motion 
pictures are the palladium of free institutions. 

The report of the Executive Council of the federa¬ 
tion accompanying the foregoing resolution further 
stated that proposals introduced for state and Federal 
censorship of motion pictures 

have had the support of a number of well-meaning persons who 
really desire to protect the children of the country and to pro¬ 
mote a sense of high morality. However, there is involved in 
the proposition something more than is generally appreciated. 
The number, variety and uses of motion pictures have been so 
greatly increased that they now constitute an important means 
of expression. . . It has been the theory of the few that people 
can be “made good by law.” This same theory underlies the 
efforts of those who propose government censorship. 

There has (however) been worked out a voluntary system 
by which objectionable and vicious information can be eliminated 
from motion pictures. Since this is based upon no legislative 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


iii 


enactment and exercises no governmental prerogative, their de¬ 
cisions amount only to an expression of opinion, which carries 
weight in accordance with the honesty, the discretion and the 
wisdom of the members of the board. 

The board referred to above is the National Board of 
Review of Motion Pictures, which is a volunteer organ¬ 
ization reviewing practically the entire American motion 
picture output and fundamentally opposed to legalized 
censorship of the screen. The National Board of Re¬ 
view holds that existing laws are ample to protect the 
public from the exhibition of anything that is indecent, 
immoral or obscene. It holds that the pre-publicity cen¬ 
sorship of motion pictures is just as clearly an invasion 
of constitutional rights as would be a similar censorship 
of the press. In the words of The Morning World- 
Herald of Omaha, Nebraska, apropos of a censorship bill 
which had been introduced in Nebraska, '‘the freedom of 
the press does not mean immunity from punishment for 
any offense against the law. But it does mean that no 
court, no magistrate, no bureau or commission or board 
of censors may be created to pass in advance on matter 
intended for publication, and say “this, is permitted," 
and “this is forbidden." The publisher prints at his own 
risk and on his own responsibility and pays the penalty 
for his misdeeds after he has been tried before a jury and 
found guilty. 

The moving picture house is taking its stand alongside the 
newspaper, the weekly and monthly periodical, the book pub¬ 
lishing house. It talks to as wide an audience as any of them, 
talks the same language, deals with the same stuff and substance 
of life. It prints the news of the world. It prints editorials 
and sermons on present and past events. It provides stories, 
romances, tales of travel and adventure, tragedy, comedy, just 
as do the newspapers, magazines and books. 

And it is entitled to the same responsible freedom as they. 
What is vastly more important, a free and self-governing people, 
not a censored people wearing blinders and a bridle, are entitled 
to the same right of access to pictures that please them as to 
newspapers, books and magazines that please them. “Movies,” 
books, magazines and newspapers alike, they are subject to the 
limitations of the laws that are necessary for the protection of a 
society that is decent the same as it is free. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


i u 


~\ 


It is not generally realized that the National Board of 
Review is a cooperative but effective organization by 
whose decisions the manufacturers voluntarily pledge 
themselves to abide. In its large and varied member¬ 
ship it aims to be representative of the American public. 
In the nature of its decisions it aims to represent public 
opinion. It is sympathetic to the motion picture screen 
and to the masses who find in it their chief diversion as 
well as an important means of enlightenment. It en¬ 
deavors to estimate average public opinion and to modify 
pictures in those respects which are clearly for the pub¬ 
lic good. That it is successful in this endeavor is borne 
out both by the increasing measure of cooperation ac¬ 
corded it by the producing companies and by the general 
decrease of adverse criticism of motion pictures during 
the last four or five years. This check upon the exhibi¬ 
tion of motion pictures which may contain elements of 
questionable propriety is a vastly different proposition 
from the legalized censorship of the screen which assumes 
that a small group of people, usually three in number, 
possess infallible fore-knowledge of what the public 
should have and, themselves immune from correction, 
should dictate what the public may or may not be per¬ 
mitted to see. If the producing company believes that the 
national board has over-reached itself it is free to exhibit 
its film nevertheless and get the verdict of the theater 
audiences upon it. That this recourse has been adopted 
but once in the last four years is testimony to the gen¬ 
erally accepted wisdom of the national board’s decisions. 

It is notorious that censors of the legalized state 
boards do not agree. The decisions of the state boards 
differ one from another. The members of any given state 
board frequently disagree. For instance, the chairman of 
the Pennsylvania board was recently reported as having 
said in effect that his job was becoming intolerable 
because lie could not stand the narrowminded and ridic¬ 
ulous decisions of his tw r o confreres. It is only a large 
and representative group, actuated by no motives but 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


113 

those of public interest and removed alike from political 
influences or commercial interest in the motion picture 
industry, which may safely be entrusted with the editor¬ 
ship of what appears upon the screen. 

There is no popular demand for state censorship. It 
is inimical to the free institutions of this country. It is 
opposed by the American Federation of Labor. It is 
clear, therefore, what position organized labor every¬ 
where should take with regard to it. The only question 
remains, will organized labor awake to the situation and 
oppose censorship legislation where it is introduced as in 
Massachusetts? Or will it wait supinely until it finds 
itself saddled with this undemocratic institution? It is 
up to the local unions of the Massachusetts State Branch 
of the American Federation to say how these questions 
shall be answered. 


COMMON SENSE AND THE FILM MENACE 1 

The movies are bad. The movies are vile. The 
movies are demoralizing. The movies are indecent. The 
movies are unfit and unclean. So the complaints pour in, 
the great bulk of them from women. Yet it is for 
women that the modern photoplay is made. Producers 
admit and protest that they have womankind more or less 
exclusively in view when they fabricate what is being 
projected on the screen nowadays in the majority of 
motion-picture show places. 

Feminine patrons of the movies are very largely in 
the majority. In most families the women lead the way. 
The men trail along and hope they may see Charlie Chap¬ 
lin or Mutt and Jeff or “Dong” Fairbanks, when his acro¬ 
batics are not too unbelievable. The men are also in¬ 
terested in the news pictures and hope against hope that 
some worth-while long-reel feature may be shown. In- 
frequentlv they are rewarded. More often they must sit 

1 Editorial. Ladies' Home Journal. 38: 2 4. April, 1921. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


114 

through a nightmare serial, a sickening bathing-girl 
frolic, a hectic drama in which human nature is inverted, 
perverted and contorted to a degree that must cause the 
low-grade feeble-minded to wonder why they have not 
been invited into the inner councils of the celluloid barons. 

And woman is to blame for it all! She is the causation. 
Primarily the pictures are made for her. She has been 
analyzed by the studio psychologists. Her reactions have 
been indexed and charted. She has peaks and valleys of 
enthusiasm—mostly peaks. She is the low popular taste 
that this enormous new industry is influenced by in its 
choice of themes and their execution. 

Such is the indictment. There are innumerable 
counts in the bill. It is a sufficiently plausible ar¬ 
raignment to demand vigorous action on the defensive. 
Women’s organizations throughout America should 
stir themselves to do something. They cannot use 
their new power and prestige to better advantage than 
to effect a cure of the evil that has brought the photo¬ 
play down to its present level. 

This comment, naturally, applies to levels. Better 
pictures are being made every year, but the average 
registers rather a decline than an elevation. 

If women are to exert pressure to raise the average 
so that they may feel contented to allow whatever 
influence the films have upon the rising generation 
full sway, the time for them to study the problem 
dispassionately and from the common-sense premise is 
now. Silly crusades will do more harm than good; 
they die of their own reactions. The passage of a 
hodge-podge of conflicting state-censorship laws is be¬ 
ing widely urged as a cure-all. More political jobs. 
More taxes to pay salaries to busy censors chosen 
from among the faithful in the party vineyard. Con¬ 
tusion. Obfuscation. Rhode Island censors rule bobbed 
hair immoral. Contrary, Arizona censors. Iowa cen¬ 
sors ban cigarettes for male or female. Contrary, Ken¬ 
tucky and North Carolina censors. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


115 

Imagine what would have happened to Pilgrim’s 
Progress, Robinson Crusoe, Lorna Doone, Uncle 
Tom’s Cabin, Vanity Fair, Huckleberry Finn and the 
Scarlet Letter if forty-eight sets of censors had read 
copy on the original manuscripts and cut and snipped 
and expunged at will in order to prove to the taxpaying 
public that they were earning their salaries. Yankee 
Doodle and the Star-Spangled Banner could never have 
survived the inquisition of so many clashing minds of 
the degree of intelligence usually found among our 
small office holders. 

The distribution of films is an interstate business. 
We can never have good pictures unless they have 
wide distribution. The cost of exhibiting a film to 
forty-eight groups of state censors and changing that 
film to suit the peculiar laws of each state, and on 
top of the peculiar laws the personal prejudices and 
opinions of each little board that interprets the laws, 
is an appalling charge to add to an already crushing 
overhead. 

Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, Maryland, the city of 
Chicago and Canada have passed censorship laws and 
have been operating their censorships for some time. 
If there has been any noticeable betterment of pictures 
under these censorships, we have been unable to ob¬ 
tain any evidence of the fact—either hearsay or direct 
visual evidence. 

You cannot legislate better films. You cannot leg¬ 
islate better books, better magazines, better works of 
art, better thoughts, better impulses. Every state and 
community has existing police powers to close any 
show place where anything provably vicious is being 
exhibited. Legislation that is abstract and interpretive 
is the short-cut, negative way to betterment that ap¬ 
peals chiefly to job hunters and snapshot reformers. 

The positive method, the sane method, the sure- 
result method is to boost the good pictures. If you 
will organize your boost intensively for good photo- 


n6 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


plays and utterly ignore the bad ones—unless it is a 
police matter—the “thunders of silence” will take care 
of their extinction. 

Apologists for the demoralizing form of the film 
drama seek to persuade us that the sex motif was in¬ 
jected to meet popular demand. This is the usual cheap 
camouflage of the opportunist and sensationalist. Pop¬ 
ular demand must always be guessed at in the first 
instance. It has never yet sent heralds out to clamor 
for what it wanted. The sex motif probably dates back 
to the Java ape man and his genus. It is the most 
elemental of all interest motives for mankind. You 
will find it in the best that art and literature has pro¬ 
duced and you will find it in the lowest pretensions 
to art and literature. It was introduced into the films 
not as art or literature but as merchandise, something 
to sell by the foot to a palpitant public. It has been 
tried out on the same basis in a certain group of maga¬ 
zines until it palled of its own inanity and sameness. 

Such will be its fate on the screen, for popular taste 
periodically proves itself an infinitely cleaner thing than 
narrow and vicious intelligences ever give it credit for. 
The sex motif is now “all in the eye” of the opportun¬ 
ist. It will linger in his eye until we can get together 
and boost the good pictures that tell a real story and 
have a real background. When intelligent producers 
take an intelligent stand and produce big, clean photo¬ 
plays and tell the world that they are big and clean, 
they’ll find millions of backers everywhere ready to 
rise up and boost for them. 

The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures 
has hammered away on this common-sense principle 
ever since its organization. This National Board of 
Review is composed of men and women who are un¬ 
selfishly interested in grading up the quality and kind 
of motion pictures that are shown everywhere in the 
United States. They are not job holders or place hunt¬ 
ers. I hey have no political bosses or voting constitu- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


n 7 


encies to satisfy. They offer themselves not as en¬ 
emies of the film producers but as cooperators, and 
they have succeeded right alcfng in obtaining honest 
and sincere cooperation from the better class of pro¬ 
ducers in the industry. The fly-bv-night shyster will, 
of course, cooperate only with the devil, and a pretty 
low-down, moron type of devil at that. 

“Boost for better films” is the advice offered to all 
organizations of women everywhere by the National 
Board of Review of Motion Pictures, which has its 
headquarters at No. 70 Fifth Avenue, New York city. 
Organize in your neighborhood, no matter how 
small your town, a better-films committee. Join, if 
you hear of one near by. Get in touch with the Na¬ 
tional Board of Review for suggestions and advice. 

If half of our readers would devote thirty minutes 
a week to finding out what are the good pictures and 
boosting them, “the deaf-and-dumb menace” would 
soon be headed off and the motion picture would 
begin to transform itself into one of the most potent 
influences for good that has been developed in modern 
times. 


STATE CENSORSHIP OF MOTION PICTURES 1 

An Invasion of Constitutional Rights 

The Constitution of the United States and those 
of the several states guarantee freedom of speech and 
the press. Motion pictures have arisen since the fram¬ 
ing of the Constitution, but they are obviously a means 
whereby opinion is expressed, and as such are entitled 
to the same right of liberty as is accorded speech and 
press. 

On this ground many state legislatures have repeat¬ 
edly killed censorship legislation. In New York city, 

1 A pamphlet issued by the National Board of Review of Motion 
Pictures. March, 1921. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Tltt 

Mayor Gaynor vetoed an ordinance providing for cen¬ 
sorship in 1912, and a second attempt was frustrated 
in 1919, the official report against it concluding: 

Your committee is opposed to the creation of a censorship 
because it regards the remedy suggested as far more inimical 
to our institutions than the evil sought to be corrected thereby. 

A Defiance of Democratic Principles 

Legalized state censorship empowers a small group, 
usually three persons, politically appointed and of in¬ 
ferior ability, to decide what all the people of the state 
may see on the screen. It takes away from local authori¬ 
ties who are elected by the people power to regulate the 
pictures shown in their own communities. 

Censors Cannot Agree 

Only four states have boards of censorship, and 
these continually contradict one another in their de¬ 
cisions. If every state had censorship, there would be 
forty-eight independent, conflicting, arbitrary standards 
to which motion pictures must conform. It is incon¬ 
ceivable that this could make for better pictures. 

No Popular Demand for Censorship 

There is no popular demand for state censorship. The 
average American family attend the show once a week 
and enjoy it. Censorship agitation is artificially stirred 
up by well-meaning but insufficiently informed reformers, 
who wish to impose their own standards of taste upon 
everybody else. It is encouraged bv certain political ele¬ 
ments who covet the patronage and the power over chan¬ 
nels of public information which it would give them. 

Unjust Discrimination 

Compared with other forms of dramatic entertain¬ 
ment, the motion picture is the least objectionable of all 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


119 


on the score of morals. To single it out for censorship, 
therefore, is on the face of it indefensibly unjust and 
stupid. 


Censorship No Solution of this Child Problem 

The chief reason advanced for state censorship is that 
ordinary shows are unfit for children to attend. 

In the first place, no censorship can banish melodrama 
from the screen, or expurgate it into a commendable en¬ 
tertainment’for children. 

In the second place, nobody has any business to try 
to do this. The motion picture is the chief amusement of 
the adult public, and any attempt to standardize it as a 
child’s entertainment is as intolerable as it is impossible. 

The only solution of the child problem is to provide 
children with special programs. 


Confusion of Taste With Morals 

Most clamor for censorship makes no distinction be¬ 
tween bad taste and bad morals. It is chiefly concerned 
with the former, quite oblivious of the fact that standards 
of taste are irreconcilable. What is good taste to one is 
bad taste to another. 

Public Opinion the Only Effectual Censor 

Awakened public opinion is the only efifectual guar¬ 
anty of safety and decency. Responsibility for public 
morals should therefore be put squarely up to the com¬ 
munity and its constituted authorities. Any scheme which 
takes responsibility and authority away from the com¬ 
munity and vests them in a distant and small committee 
is plainly dangerous and vicious, particularly if such a 
board is clothed with arbitrary authority and is not di¬ 
rectly responsible to the people. 

The standards of the local theater audience differ 
from the average standards of a whole state. The legal 
censors would have us believe that state censorship is 
based on the state average of opinion. But there is no 


120 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


state average which legal censors may voice in their de¬ 
cisions. The opinions of the people of an entire state are 
composed of a conglomerate mixture of opinions and 
standards which no one board can possibly combine so as 
to give it a real gauge of public opinion. For instance: 

The mayor of one of the leading cities of Ohio re¬ 
cently said that the Ohio Board of Censors were allow¬ 
ing in his city pictures which the citizens would not per¬ 
mit, had the power of regulation not been taken from 
them and vested in the state board. 

In another great city of Ohio, a federation of churches 
and other organizations are at work enforcing higher 
standards than those endorsed by the state censors. Since 
the managers have a legal right to exhibit pictures passed 
bv the state board, the federation must depend upon the 
good-will and cooperation of these men. 

If, then, the public and the managers in one of the 
largest cities of the country voluntarily agree that their 
standards are different from those of the state board of 
censors, what is the use of the hoard? Its claim that its 
decisions represent state sentiment is contrary to fact. 

Such a board, then, is clearly a drag upon public opin¬ 
ion and the motion picture producers in any attempt to 
further the development of the artistic picture. It is an 
authority to be invoked by the unthinking or the preju¬ 
diced or those with special axes to grind who see in the 
motion picture an enemy to their own particular point of 
view or their own interests. It is an engine to frustrate 
the will of the people, to interfere with the only healthy 
and efficient regulation of public morals. 

Censorship of News and Educational Films 

All news and educational films are passed upon by the 
state boards of censorship in the four states where they 
are in operation. The most telling count against the cen¬ 
sors is that they have deliberately suppressed news or 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


121 


altered ilieir import by cutting out portions. In one in¬ 
stance, the statement of a presidential candidate was cut; 
in another, sections of a news picture which showed ban¬ 
ners inscribed with sentiments adverse to another presi¬ 
dential candidate were deleted. But the most notorious 
instance is perhaps the cutting out by the Pennsylvania 
censors of pictures and captions dealing with the coal 
strike. Public opinion would not tolerate such interfer¬ 
ence with the printed news, and when it is aware of 
what legalized censorship of news on the screen is doing, 
it will not countenance that. 

But the state censors have not stopped at the news 
films. Scientific and educational films photographed bv 
experts in their respective subjects have been ruthlessly 
mangled in order to make educational pictures conform 
to rules formulated for amusement films! Could there be 
a worse system than one which places ignorance in a 
position to cut and alter the findings of scientific research f 

The fastening of this designing, ignorant, irrespon¬ 
sible tyranny upon our free institutions would be a public 
calamity such as we have not seen since our nation was 
founded upon the principle that enlightenment, liberty 
and personal responsibility are the foundations of order 
and progress. 


National Board and the Freedom of the Screen 

Fundamental in the theory of the National Board of 
Review is the recognition of the screen's right to freedom. 

The conviction that there can be no complete conver¬ 
gence of opinion as to what is precisely moral and what 
is precisely immoral, or as to where questions of taste and 
morals overlap, is basic in its conception of motion pic¬ 
ture regulations. 

The national board believes that public opinion, which 
is the compound of all tastes and all ideas of morals, is 
the only competent judge of the screen. 


122 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


But public opinion cannot regulate if there is no free¬ 
dom of the screen to allow it to decide for itself zvhat 
shall and shall not be presented to it. 

National Board and the Question of Differing 

Opinions 

The national board holds that the very tendency to 
differ in opinions is the safest guard against arbitrary, 
self-assured and narrow censorship of the motion pic¬ 
tures. 

Through all its members it tries to determine and re¬ 
flect the thought of the people at large. 

It encourages the expression of as many opinions as 
possible on the pictures passing under its review. The 
majority opinion rules. 

What the Majority Opinion Represents 

This majority opinion, born of differences of opinion, 
very nearly represents the prevailing concensus of the 
wide, diverging, shifting, continually advancing host of 
viewpoints which make up public opinion. 

For the membership of the national board, comprising 
upwards of two hundred persons, itself is representative 
of that broad commingling of points of view. These 
members of its reviewing committees are drawn from 
many different walks of life, environments, professions 
and interests. 


The Blue Pencil Principle 

Every newspaper, before it goes to press, is submitted 
to the blue pencil, in order that nothing contravening the 
public good and the welfare of the publication shall ap¬ 
pear. The blue pencil is exercised with as nearly precise 
knowledge of the public state of mind as the editor is able 
to obtain. Tie derives his knowledge through many ave¬ 
nues of approach to the public mind. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


i -\3 


Thus the blue pencil, properly used, is the instrument 
°i Public opinion. It is wielded with common consent. 

I lie majority opinion of the members of the national 
hoard on given pictures, since it approximates public 
opinion, is the blue pencil used for the public good and 


the screen’s welfare. 

Under this system, the screen, like the press, is made 
responsible to the people at large. If its editing is un¬ 
satisfactory, it will hear from the public, and its standards 
may be readjusted. 


This is the antithesis of a censorship imposed by a po¬ 
litical power upon both screen and public, which makes 
no concession to general opinion, which admits of making 
no mistake, which establishes political control over the 
public news service. 

hvery good American should oppose state censorship 
of the screen. 


MOVIE, CENSOR, AND PUBLIC 1 

Both the advocates and the opponents of motion picture 
censorship must necessarily erect their arguments upon 
the basis of the self-same fundament of facts: and this 
foundation is so huge in its dimensions as always to stag¬ 
ger the imaginations of those “not native unto that ele¬ 
ment.” Jt is a fact that at the present time there are thou¬ 
sands and thousands of motion picture theaters in this 
country and that these theaters are attended every day by 
millions and millions of people. It is a fact 
that these millions and millions of people de¬ 
rive the main inspiration and guidance of their 
lives from what they see upon the screen, instead 
of deriving their guidance and their inspiration from 
what they dailv gather from their own experience or from 
what they daily read; and it is also a fact that the major- 

1 By Clayton Hamilton. Literary Review, New York Evening Post. 
December 30, 1922. 


124 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


ity of these millions and millions of spectators are young 
people whose characters and lives are within the malleable 
process of formation. Thus it is an undisputed fact that 
the motion picture, willy-nilly, has already become one of 
the most potent factors in the education of our public; 
that it exerts bv psychological suggestion an unprece¬ 
dented influence for good or bad; and that no other in¬ 
formative or educative force—not even our widespread 
daily press—can at all approach it in vividness of appeal 
or in extensiveness of influence. We have arrived al¬ 
ready at the point where a dictator or a demagogue might 
safely say: “I care not who makes the laws for the na¬ 
tion, provided that I may control what shall and what 
shall not be shown upon its motion picture screens.” 

Obviously, it would be a good thing for our public, 
and particularly for our rising generation, if our motion 
pictures could be made only by great artists endowed 
with an infallible genius for never showing anything upon 
the screen which was not indisputably true, and therefore, 
—as a necessary corollary—unquestionably beautiful. It 
would also be a fine thing for our public if all our books 
were good books, if all our plays were good plays, if all 
our buildings were excellent examples of architecture, if 
all our works of painting and of sculpture were positively 
beautiful, and if all our newspapers were as sincerely 
earnest in their effort to educate and to uplift the public 
as—let us say—the Christian Science Monitor. To state 
the matter briefly, the world would be a better place to 
live in if the millenium had come. 

But, as President Cleveland once remarked, we are 
confronted not by a theory but by an actual condition. 
The vast majority of the millions and millions of our 
people who patronize the motion pictures every day are 
uncultured, under-educated, unrefined; they have their 
own tastes which are oftentimes deplor?ble; and they are 
able to assert these tastes very effectively at the box office. 
It costs several tens of thousands of dollars to make even 
an ordinary motion picture; and it has been found in 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


125 


practice that it is both dangerous and difficult to get this 
money back by producing and exhibiting motion pictures 
aimed too loftily above the expressed appreciation of the 
many-headed multitude. It must be admitted also that 
many of our motion picture magnates who only a few 
years ago were sponging suits or manufacturing minor 
articles of apparel are just as uncultured, under-educated, 
unrefined as the multitudinous mob they cater to in their 
commercial effort to give the public what it wants. 
Nevertheless, it must be swiftly admitted, on the other 
hand that these very magnates have in recent years con¬ 
sistently and steadfastly endeavored to improve the 
quality of their productions by employing accredited au¬ 
thors, directors, actors, and designers and urging these 
artists to exert their ingenuity to the utmost in the deli¬ 
cate task of slipping over to the public something appreci¬ 
ably better than what the public seems to want. It is un¬ 
deniable that our best motion pictures are now far finer 
that the best motion pictures of a few years back. Mr. 
Douglas Fairbanks's current production of “Robin Hood,” 
for instance, may be accepted seriously as a work of art. 
it is both true and beautiful, and it exerts an educative 
and uplifting influence upon the heedless millions who 
swarm to see it. 

It is evident enough that the motion picture indus¬ 
try, despite the heavy incubus of its comparatively taste¬ 
less and comparatively stupid—because enormous—pub¬ 
lic, and despite the almost equally heavy incubus of those 
of its own magnates who remain both stupid and tasteless, 
is managing to improve its productions with a rapidity 
which, in view of the discouraging conditions, is surpris¬ 
ing. The big companies, as time goes on, are making 
fewer and fewer but better and better pictures; and the 
progression of the industry toward the status of an art 
is, quite apparently, proceeding by leaps and bounds. 

This progress has, of course, derived its main im¬ 
pulse from the vast army of veritable artists—most of 
them uncelebrated and unknown—who, finding them- 


126 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


selves caught up in the machinery of the motion picture 
industry, are striving hard, according to their own innate 
illumination, to be torchbearers along the perilous path 
which this monstrous organism must still tread before it 
enters the ivory gate which leads to art. If the motion 
picture industry may pride itself upon the rapid progress 
which it has achieved and registered within the last few 
years, if it may now repeat with a bland smile the far- 
flung incantation of the celebrated Dr. Coue, ‘‘Day bv 
day, in every way, I’m getting better and better," it should 
always be remembered that this progress has resulted 
from the idealistic and undiscourageable efforts of the 
thousands of sincere artists that the industry has 
gathered to its service—the silent army of the silent 
drama. 

But, now that this impressive effort from a source that 
is inherent in the industry itself has unquestionably been 
initiated, the problem remains to be considered whether 
this strong movement toward the goal of better pictures 
would be assisted or impeded by the general establish¬ 
ment of a system of motion picture censorship. 

Before discussing censorship at all it should perhaps 
be clearly stated that everybody is agreed that obscene or 
indecent films should be ruthlessly exterminated. But to 
effect this purpose it is not necessary to appoint a board 
of censors. The public is already sufficiently protected by 
our inherited common law. The manufacturers and dis¬ 
tributers of films which are indecent or obscene can, and 
should, be prosecuted; and a single successful prosecution 
in any community would make it commercially impossible 
for the culprits to repeat the offence. But censorship is 
something very different from summary police protection 
of this sort. 

At the present time boards of censorship for motion 
pictures have been legislatively established in the states of 
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, Maryland, and New York, 
in the city of Chicago, and in various other local regions 
of this country; and a determined effort is being made to 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


127 


extend the system of censorship to other states, and also to 
hasten the whole matter by initiating a nation-wide ma¬ 
chinery of censorship under the segis of the Federal 
control of interstate commerce. 

This effort to establish by due process of law the prin¬ 
ciple of motion picture censorship throughout the nation 
is well organized and politically strong. The opposition 
—because of innate carelessness and a too comfortable 
advocacy of the easy doctrine of laissez faire —is not well 
organized and is not politically strong. Hence, for those 
who desire a disinterested adjudication of this public 
problem there is a danger that the verdict may he de¬ 
livered by default and that a repetition may occur of that 
now historic instance of injustice to the democratic prin¬ 
ciple whereby a prohibition amendment was legislated in¬ 
to our Constitution at a convenient moment when nearly 
four millions of our voters were occupied in France. 

If we are willing to accept without argument those 
principles upon which our American forefathers founded 
this republic—affording thereby a new beacon to a 
darkened world—we must admit that any legislated cen¬ 
sorship, of books, or plays, or paintings, or statues, or 
buildings, or musical compositions, or motion pictures, 
must be theoretically wrong; for such a censorship must 
necessarily appoint an autocratic few to determine what 
mav and what mav not he said or shown to the democratic 
many. But practice is not always harmonious with prin¬ 
ciple ; and in practice, for instance, it has been found ad¬ 
visable to appoint building commissions empowered to 
prohibit the erection of any work of architecture which, 
however beautiful on paper, seems likely to fall down if 
translated into stone. 

In practice, if not in principle, a Federal board of mo¬ 
tion picture censorship might he desirable if this board 
could he composed of three such men as—let us say— 
Matthew Arnold, Walter Bagehot, and James Russell 
Lowell. But such men are horn vary rarely; and, even 
when they do exist and might he invited to serve as cen- 


128 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


sors, they are too busy to devote their time to a critical 
examination of the millions and millions of feet of film that 
are manufactured every year. According to our present 
politics, a salaried position on the board of motion picture 
censorship in any state will naturally be regarded as a 
soft berth for a deserving Democrat, or a deserving Re¬ 
publican or a deserving member of whatever party has 
happened to win the last election; and there can be no 
assurance whatsoever that the appointee to this soft berth 
shall be more cultured, better educated, more refined than 
the average motion picture magnate or the multitudinous 
motion picture public. Thus censorship is not only wrong 
in principle, but is also deplorable in practice, because, 
almost inevitably, it must delegate autocratic powers to 
individuals who are unworthy to carry so heavy a burden 
of the public trust. 

Speaking with the background of two solid years of 
service as an editorial executive for one of the largest and 
most important of our motion picture factories, I am 
willing to say frankly that the progress of the industry 
toward the ultimate goal of art is at the present time im¬ 
peded less by the ignorance of the public and the obtuse¬ 
ness of the magnates than by the stupidity of the censors 
in those regions wherein censorship has already been 
established and by a haunting fear of the extension of 
censorship to other regions. There is not an author, not 
a director, not an actor, not a scenic designer who is not 
opposed to motion picture censorship; and the reason is 
that all the members of the silent army of the silent drama 
have learned in practice that censorship is inimical, if not 
utterly destructive, to their earnest efforts to erect the 
motion picture to the status of an art. 

The seriousness of the situation is seldom understood 
by the members of our body politic, who have many other 
things to think about. It should therefore be regarded as 
a very fortunate event that Mr. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, 
Ph.D., Litt.D., has been moved to publish a book on “The 
Morals of the Movie.’’ Mr. Oberholtzer has served for 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


129 


six years as a member of the Pennsylvania State Board 
of Censors: throughout the motion picture industry the 
Pennsylvania Board of Censors has been recognized for 
several years as the most unreasonable in its rulings, the 
most drastic in its devastations; and now, by the publica¬ 
tion of this book, an opportunity has been afforded to the 
judicious reader to measure the mind of the sort of person 
who may be empowered by the existence of a legislated 
censorship to obstruct the path between the initiators and 
the appreciators of the current struggle of the motion pic¬ 
ture to become an art. 

Mr. Oberholtzer is, evidently, earnest and sincere. His 
mental attitude is representative of that of the censor at 
its best and by no means at its worst. Yet he reveals 
himself, on nearly every page of his confession of faith, 
as an enemy and not a friend of the motion picture indus¬ 
try ; he regards the motion picture primarily as an engine 
of evil, instead of regarding it potentially as an influence 
for good; and in every chapter, he shows an utter inabil¬ 
ity to understand the very meaning of morality as ap¬ 
plied to the critical appraisal of a work of art. 

Mr. Oberholtzer is so ignorant of the basic principles 
of etiiics and esthetics that he believes the moral integrity 
of any work of art may be predetermined by merely 
glancing at its subject matter ; whereas all philosophic 
critics are agreed that the morality or immorality of any 
story, or of any passage in a story, is dependent merely on 
its truth or falsity. There is no such thing, per se. as an 
immoral subject for a narrative: in the treatment of the 
subject, and only in the treatment, lies the basis for ethi¬ 
cal judgment of the work. The one thing needful in 
order that a motion picture shall be moral is that its 
makers shall maintain at every point a sane and healthy 
insight into the soundness or unsoundness of the motives 
and actions of the characters. The artist must know 
when his characters are right and know when they are 
wrong - and must make clear to us the reasons for his 
judgment. He cannot be immoral unless he is untrue. 


130 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


To make us pity his characters when they are vile or love 
them when they are noxious, to invent excuses for them 
in situations where they cannot be excused, to leave us 
satisfied when their baseness has been unbetrayed, to 
make us wonder if after all the exception is not greater 
than the rule—in a single word, to lie about his charac¬ 
ters : this is for the artist the one unpardonable sin. 

But censors such as Mr. Oberholtzer invariably judge 
the morality of a work of art not by its treatment but by 
its subject matter. They would condemn “Othello" be¬ 
cause the hero kills his wife—what a suggestion, look 
you, to carry into our homes! They would regard “Mac¬ 
beth” as an immoral play because it makes night hideous 
with murder; and, as for the greatest of all Greek 
dramas, “CEdipus the King," they would forbid it as un¬ 
fit for public presentation. In fact, it would be very 
difficult to find a single great play, or great epic, or great 
novel, or great story that has long been honored in the 
literature of any nation which, if reproduced upon the 
screen with the utmost possible fidelity to the original 
text, would be passed without drastic mutilation by the 
Pennsylvania Board of Censors. 

It is evident, for instance, from his book that Mr. 
Oberholtzer is convinced sex is in itself an evil and an 
ugly thing and that the universe was guilty of a lapse in 
moral taste when it evolved the natural means of propa¬ 
gating the human race. So strong is his conviction on this 
point that one is almost tempted to wonder if Mr. Ober¬ 
holtzer has ever managed to forgive his own parents for 
what he must regard as the regrettable act of bringing 
him into the world. At any rate, in the state of Penn¬ 
sylvania a happily married young woman may not be 
shown upon the screen in the act of whispering to her 
husband the sweet news that they are to have a baby; 
nor may she be shown in pantomime in the domestic oc¬ 
cupation of sewing baby clothes. 

To justify these prohibitions, the censors always 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


131 

assert that such scenes should not be set before children 
of tender age, lest they be inspired to ask their parents 
awkward questions. But it never seems to occur to the 
censors that the proper place for young and growing 
children is either in school, or in the homes, or in the hack 
lot playing the national game. Parents do not take their 
children to the theater to see “Hedda Gabler,” or “Anna 
C hristie, or any other play that children cannot under¬ 
stand. Is there any necessary reason why the)- must take 
them to motion pictures that have been planned for an 
adult intelligence ? And if most parents are so stupid 
that their children must be guarded by the intervention 
of the law, would it not be wiser to institute an ordinance 
forbidding all children under a certain age to attend 
any public entertainment than to institute a censorship 
demanding that all motion pictures shall be suited to the 
intelligence of the eight-year-old child? 

Again, the censors always assert that such stories as 
“Hamlet,” “Macbeth," “Othello," and “King Lear” must 
be banished from the screen because they might incite the 
weak minded to deeds of violence and rapine. But must 
our artists be condemned to make stories only for the 
weak minded ? It is, I believe, an admitted fact of history 
that the weak-minded Czolgosz was incited to the murder 
of President McKinley by something that he had read in 
a newspaper but must we therefore suppress all news¬ 
papers and deprive the vast majority of our law-abiding 
citizens of their daily means of contact with current 
events ? 

To satisfy the illogical demands of the Pennsylvania 
censors and their followers in other states, our authors 
and directors are continually tempted to tell lies about 
life and to sickly o’er their stories with a pale cast of 
wishy-washy sentimentalism. This is bad for the motion 
picture as an art, and it is bad for the public. There is 
an ever-present danger that the public may believe what 
is shown to it upon the screen, and that the rising genera- 


132 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


lion may be persuaded that life is as silly and as meaning¬ 
less as the formula to which the censors insist that it 
should be reduced. 

Mr. Oberholtzer grows positively entertaining when 
he gleefully explains how easy it is for a censor to alter 
the entire meaning of a story which an author has care¬ 
fully prepared. “The result is brought about/' lie tells 
us, “mainly by changes in the captions and the titles 
with a cutting and rearrangement of scenes. A man liv¬ 
ing with a mistress finds himself married to her. A 
natural child is legitimatized. Throughout the story the 
relationships are changed. Some knowledge of play con¬ 
struction, a little literary skill, and a patient spirit are 
necessary to obtain results which are of any practical 
use.” Then, as an example of his own literary skill, he 
tells us that, in censoring a motion picture version of 
“Michael and His Lost Angel,” one of the truest and 
most beautiful of modern English plays, he eliminated 
the subtitle “T hat means that you and I will be here until 
morning,” and substituted “For years I have preached 
the insolubility \sic\ of marriage; now 1 am weakening.” 

But funny as such antics are. we must not be un¬ 
mindful of their tragic implications. It is a fact that no 
citizen or resident of the state of Pennsylvania is allowed 
to see any narrative on the screen that has not first been 
filtered through such a mind as this. Mr. Kipling’s classic 
story “Without Benefit of Clergy,” which had been care¬ 
fully prepared for the screen with the collaborative as¬ 
sistance of the great author himself, could not be released 
until the censors had “legitimatized” it by asserting in a 
subtitle that Holden was married to Ameera. In the fact 
of such a situation how can the ablest and best inten- 
tioned of our writers ever succeed in lifting the motion 
picture to the level of an art? And if the motion picture 
is forbidden to become an art, if it is forbidden to set 
forth stories that are true and consequently beautiful, if 
it is forbidden to appeal to the adult intelligence, to direct 
its message not to the weak minded but to the healthy 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


133 


minded, if it must remain forever a wishy-washy medium 
for telling sentimental lies, may it not be seriously said 
that we are shamefully misusing what is admitted to be, 
willy-nilly, one of the most potent influences today in 
the education of our public? It is to be hoped that Mr. 
Oberholtzer’s disquisition on “The Morals of the Movie” 
will be very widely circulated and that those who read it 
will think about the problem very carefully. 

SHALL THE MOVIES BE CENSORED? 1 

The first legalized censor board was established in 
Ohio nine years ago, and since then six other states have 
passed laws establishing such boards—Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, Kansas, New York, Virginia and Massachu¬ 
setts. In the last two the law is not as yet operative. 
Censor board bills were defeated in thirty-seven states 
during the past year. 

The Board of Censors of Ohio was first organized 
under the Industrial Commission in 1913. In 1921 the 
administrative departments of Ohio were reorganized by 
the legislature, at which time the former board was dis¬ 
banded and a division of film censorship was set up under 
the department of education, with a division chief and 
two assistants. An advisory board appointed by the gov¬ 
ernor to serve without pay, was created. This is the 
method of organization that obtains at the present time. 

A bill has been recently introduced in the national 
House of Representatives creating a new division of the 
Bureau of Education to he known as the Federal Motion 
Picture Commission. Briefly, this bill provides for a 
commission of three to serve six years each at a salary 
of $6,000 per annum. It would review all films intended 
for interstate or foreign shipment and license those that 
do not corrupt public morals, incite to crime, etc. This 
bill has been referred to the House Committee on Educa- 

1 Excerpt from Report of the Municipal Committee of the Cleveland, 
Ohio, Chamber of Commerce. May 24, 1922. 


134 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


tion where it is still pending. The chairman informs us 
that there will not he immediate consideration given to 
this bill because of extended hearings on a similar hill 
several years ago. 


The Case for Motion Picture Censorship 

The arguments for censorship which have been pre¬ 
sented to the committee, are summarized as follows: 

The claim has been made that censorship is un-Ameri¬ 
can ; that we would not tolerate a censorship of the press. 
This would be admitted to be true by many of the ad¬ 
vocates of censorship, but it must not be forgotten that 
the production of motion pictures is a comparatively new 
industry. It has become one of the largest businesses in 
the country almost over night. Its rapid growth demands 
drastic control. Censorship is the only agency that has 
kept it at all within the bounds of propriety. 

It has been said time and time again that a consider¬ 
able portion of juvenile delinquency is directly traceable 
to the motion picture show. Children are bv instinct 
imitators and when the youthful minds observe the scenes 
of murder and robbery, which are continually being 
shown on our screens, their desire to imitate is quickened 
and it is not long before some of them, at least, are 
brought into the juvenile court. A survey of the opinions 
of New York grade school principals shows the undue 
evil influence which the screen has on the juvenile mind. 

Even if it should be admitted that censorship is funda¬ 
mentally unsound, it has accomplished and is accomplish¬ 
ing one great good—it is bringing the movie interests to 
the realization that in the long run they cannot foist sal¬ 
acious or unclean films on the public. It is a constant re¬ 
minder to them that the public has paid eyes to watch the 
things they do. Thus their works are brought into the 
open and that very fact tends to keep them clean. 

It is the opinion of many men in the business that 
censorship, or the threat of it, has forced the producers 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 135 

to keep their house somewhat in order. Without this 
method of expressing public opinion, the unscrupulous 
producer would have long ago gone to such extremes as 
to bring down prohibitory laws not only on himself, but 
on his more conscientious colleague. 

One of the best arguments for censorship is the fact 
that nearly all of its opponents tacitly admit the need of 
some kind of regulation. They make this admission by 
proposing some sort of remedy other than censorship, 
which in their opinion, would bring the screen to a higher 
moral plane. 

One of the fundamental principles of story writing is 
that some bad must go into a story, in order to bring out 
the good by contrast. This is equally true, of course, 
with the scenario. It is foolhardy to leave the decision as 
to how much bad there shall be in a picture to the pro¬ 
ducer. He is a too vitally interested party. It should 
be left to the public to determine how much bad shall go 
into a picture and this can only be done effectively through 
a board of censors. 

Many students of this problem state that indiscrim¬ 
inate kissing and embracing are taught by present-day 
moving pictures. Many scenarios are based on sex re¬ 
lations or the eternal triangle. The theater-going public 
is given the impression that such things are quite com¬ 
mon. The producer invariably treats these subjects from 
the box-office point of view. He will go to almost any 
limit to insure for his production a financial success. Such 
methods of treatment are bound to be injurious to pub¬ 
lic morals. He does not hesitate to introduce immodest 
wearing apparel and partial nakedness into the scenes in 
order to attract those who are morbid sensation lovers. 
His excuse is that he is giving the public what it wants. 
A demand can be created for anything. Demand is no 
criterion by which to judge the propriety of a thing. 
Censorship is the only answer to this kind of producer. 
He will fear no other weapon that the public may be able 
to wield. 


136 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


The Case Against Motion Picture Censorship 

The arguments against censorship which have been 
presented to the committee, are summarized as follows: 

“Congress shall make no law. . . abridging the free¬ 
dom of speech or the press. . . ”—The Constitution of 
the United States. 

Many people who are constantly clamoring for censor¬ 
ship are unable to distinguish between bad taste and bad 
morals. They lose sight of the fact that standards of 
taste are irreconcilable and that which seems to be good 
taste to one, is bad taste to another. 

Censorship is un-American. If it is applied to motion 
pictures, it is only a short step to censorship of the stage 
and press. If we were to have a censored press it is not 
difficult to conceive of the power and size of the political 
machines that could be built up under such a system. 

We all deem it our inalienable privilege to pick out 
the books we read, the plays we see, the food we eat and 
the clothes we wear. Why then, do some of us believe 
that it is necessary to have hired politicians look over our 
motion pictures before we see them and tell us what we 
may and what we may not see? 

Professional censors develop a peculiar attitude of 
mind. They are hired to ferret out evil and with that pre¬ 
disposition they are usually successful in finding some¬ 
thing that can be construed as evil whether or not it was 
the intention of the author or producer to show evil. Then 
too, they feel that they are appointed the guardians of the 
public morals. No matter how conscientious they may 
be, this places them, in their own minds at least, on a 
pedestal above the general public. It must be remembered 
that they have their jobs to hold. If they do not censor, 
then there is no censoring to be done and their jobs would 
be abolished. 

Censorship is absolutely unnecessary. There is not a 
state or a city or a town in the country that does not have 
some kind of law which makes it possible for the police 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


i.37 


to stop forthwith the showing of an unclean or salacious 
film. What more provision than this is needed to protect 
the public from a few unscrupulous producers? The 
police power is sufficient to take care of any situation that 
might arise and take care of it without denying the people 
their right of thought and action. 

Few people will deny that since the war the market 
has been flooded with many very questionable pictures— 
pictures in which the sex problem has been featured—pic¬ 
tures that without doubt have tended to lower the moral 
standards of the country. This has been due to the in¬ 
evitable backwash of the war. During the war the gov¬ 
ernment told us what to eat, when to turn out our lights, 
when not to drive our automobiles, when to do this and 
when not to do that. We were confronted bv “don’t” on 
every hand. At the close of hostilities, reaction came. 
Our restored freedom, in many cases, became license. 
The pendulum swung to the other extreme. The lack 
of restraint manifested itself in many places, including 
the movie screen, but that phase is now rapidly passing. 
The pendulum is returning to normal. The pictures of 
the last few months are much cleaner than those of two 
and three years ago. The situation is righting itself. 

Hundreds of newspapers and magazines have editor¬ 
ially opposed censorship on numerous occasions. They 
believe it to be iniquitous. They believe that a muzzled 
screen may eventually lead to a muzzled press. 

It is contended that the censor board furnishes a cross- 
section of public opinion and since the public should be 
its own censor, this is the method adopted to make that 
public opinion efifective. However, an examination of the 
eliminations made bv different boards in the same film will 
suffice to show that the censors express their personal 
opinion and not public opinion. It is seldom that any 
two boards agree on the same eliminations in the same 
film. Therefore, it cannot be truly said that censor 
boards portray the opinion of the public. 

The Cleveland Foundation survey in 1920 says, “Any 


* 3 $ 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


board of censors must not fail to touch the problem of 
keeping from children films which however wholesome 
for adults, are not proper for children.” Practically all 
those who advocate censorship, base many of their argu¬ 
ments on the harm the films are doing to the child and 
the adolescent. Many advocate reducing all films to the 
child level of intelligence and comprehension. This 
would cut oft entirely all adult patronage, and since it 
has been estimated that 85 per cent of the movie trade is 
adult, the business would, of course, be ruined, to say 
nothing of denying the great mass of our adult popula¬ 
tion the pleasures which they now derive from motion 
pictures. 

Comparison of Local, State and Federal Censorship 

It is quite generally conceded that the municipality is 
too small a geographical unit to properly exercise the 
function of censorship. This can be based almost wholly 
on the ground that any general adoption of censorship 
by municipalities would necessitate so many changes in 
films as they travel through the country as to discourage 
completely their production, or if the producers honestly 
tried to make all their pictures of the type that would 
pass all city boards, the result would be such insipid and 
lifeless productions that people would cease to attend the 
theaters. At the present time only five cities of any size 
have provided for local censorship—Chicago, Boston 
Houston (Texas), Birmingham (Alabama), and Ro- 
cheser (New York). 

State censorship is by no means general but some 
states have tried it for long enough periods to justify the 
statement that it is no longer in the experimental stage. 
Of course if all forty-eight states were to establish boards 
the same condition would exist in less aggravated form, as 
that which would result if all the principal cities were to 
establish boards. There would be forty-eight possible 
differences of opinion as to what should and what should 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


139 


not go into a given picture. This would inevitably result 
in chaos in the industry and yet it is unquestionably better 
than local censorship. It not only lessens the possible 
number of differences of opinion, but preserves the long- 
established doctrine of “state’s rights.” The state is a 
convenient geographical unit for the quick handling of 
films. In this regard it has been pointed out as an argu¬ 
ment against Federal censorship that the mass of films 
to be censored would be so great that the pictures might 
be kept off the market for a long time after their produc¬ 
tion awaiting the ability of the l 7 ederal censor board to 
get to them in the regular course of business. 

The Federal censor board would do away with the 
criticism that the multitude of opinions under the state 
board system would ruin the industry. There would be 
just one place for the producers to look for authoritv to 
release a film. Such a board would have the prestige of 
the ETderal government behind its decision. Four years 
ago a bill was introduced providing for a Federal board 
and extended hearings were held on the subject, but pub¬ 
lic opinion was not sufficiently aroused at the time and 
the bill was never reported out of the committee. Public 
sentiment is again leaning toward Federal censorship. A 
new bill has been introduced in the present session of 
Congress on the subject. 

A Federal censor board would, of course, censor alike 
for north and south, east and west, white and black and for 
the foreigner and American-born. It is the opinion of the 
opponents of Federal censorship that this would result in 
a series of difficult situations because the problems of each 
community are widely different. They believe that some 
films which could be properly shown in one community 
might cause trouble if shown in another. A good ex¬ 
ample of this is “The Birth of a Nation"—a film dealing 
with the race problem. Such a film would cause no disturb¬ 
ance in the north but in the south might tend to foment 
race riots. 


140 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Remedies Other Than Censorship 

There are so many remedies other than censorship 

✓ 

that it is possible only to mention the more important in 
this short treatise. 

The principal one is already in operation and has been 
since 1909. In that year was organized The National 
Board of Review of Motion Pictures in New York city, 
consisting entirely of volunteers. This board though 
called a national board is in no way under the control of 
the Federal government. The public-spirited citizens, com¬ 
posing the personnel of this board, review all pictures 
submitted to them by the producers, suggest changes 
where changes are necessary to protect public morals and 
if these changes are made, the board provides a “leader" 
stating its approval which is attached to the film. Their 
work has grown until today the Review Committee on 
the National Board consists of more than one hundred 
and forty citizens, both men and women, from all walks 
of life. More than 99 per cent of all the pictures pro¬ 
duced are reviewed by the various sub-committees of the 
board prior to release. In addition, this committee pub¬ 
lishes monthly a bulletin calling attention to the best re¬ 
leases and through an affiliated Committee on Better 
Films, sends out periodically another bulletin indi¬ 
cating which of the new releases are for the adult, 
which are for the juvenile and which may safely 
be seen by the entire family. The slogan of this 
organization is “Selection—Not Censorship—The So¬ 
lution." Florida has so much confidence in the 
work of these volunteers, that only recently a law 
was passed prohibiting the showing in that state of 
any film not having the approval of the National 
Board of Review. 

It has also been suggested from many sources that 
such groups as the parent-teacher associations, women’s 
clubs, etc., could organize to inspect pictures, recommend¬ 
ing those that were found worthy and designating certain 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


Mi 


films for children. The Cleveland Cinema Club, organ¬ 
ized about eight years ago, is doing this kind of work 
effectively. Bulletins are issued listing all the worth 
while releases and indicating whether the films listed are 
for the juvenile or for the adult. The club proceeds on 
the theory that by praising the good and ignoring the bad, 
the bad will eventually perish. Some organizations carry 
this system to the extent of boycotting certain specified 
theaters that persist in showing the wrong kind of pic¬ 
tures. While these various agencies do good work as 
far as they go, it is still questionable how broadly their 
influence has manifested itself. 

Another plan which has been in use in different parts 
of the country is the selection of special programs for chil¬ 
dren. The exhibitor, under this plan, either selects or 
asks some civic organization or club to select for him, a 
complete show suitable for children. Pie then advertises 
this show to be given at a time when children can go. 
either in the early evening or on Saturday morning. The 
latter is the common practice. There are several modi¬ 
fications of this plan; some advocate the erection of chil¬ 
dren's theaters where no other shows will be given ex¬ 
cept those which children can properly attend; others 
suggest that the producer make films for use either in 
children’s theaters or in selected programs. Germany 
sets aside by a law certain specified performances which 
children may attend. New York has a law prohibiting 
the attendance at motion picture houses of children under- 
sixteen unless accompanied by a parent or a bona fide 
guardian. The city of London has recently passed an 
ordinance, which goes into effect in July of this year, re¬ 
quiring all shows to be marked “adult” or “universal.” 
A child under sixteen is not permitted in an “adult” show 
unless properly accompanied. 

Another general suggestion comes from many differ¬ 
ent sources. The public must be educated in some way 
to demand better and cleaner pictures. If this demand 
can be created in the theater-going public, the entire prol> 


142 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


lem of salacious and immoral films is solved. The pro¬ 
ducer will not make pictures for which there is no de¬ 
mand. The box office is the producer’s most effective 
means of knowing what the public wants. If the bad pic¬ 
tures are boycotted and good pictures are making money, 
the bad pictures will soon disappear. Human nature can¬ 
not be changed, but human tastes can be elevated. 

There is probably one remedy other than censorship 
that stands out more prominently than all the rest—the 
responsibility of the parent. Most of the criticism of the 
modern film is based on the harm it does the children. 
Most of the proponents of censorship base their advocacy 
on the needed protection of those of tender years. The 
duty of the parent is clear. He should know before his 
child leaves home for the picture show what kind of pic¬ 
tures that child is going to see. He should know either 
because he himself has seen the picture, because it has 
been recommended by some one in whom he has confi¬ 
dence, or because it is listed as proper for the juvenile mind 
in the bulletin of a reputable club or society organized 
for the purpose of reviewing and passing judgment on 
pictures. It ought not to be necessary for the state to 
assume the duties of a parent. No parent allows his child 
to read books or go to plays indiscriminately. Why 
should he change this policy with reference to motion pic¬ 
tures? The report of the Cleveland Foundation for 1920 
points out that the “ultimate responsibility rests with the 
parents to see that their children do not attend exhibitions 
of pictures which are not suitable for their juvenile 
minds.” 

Conclusions and Recommendations 

Your committee has given due consideration to the 
facts mentioned in the preceding study. It has weighed 
carefully the opinions expressed, either before the com¬ 
mittee or in the documents to which it has had reference. 
In every case, the source was carefully scrutinized so that 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


143 


each opinion would bear its proper relation to all of the 
opinions taken in the aggregate. 

The committee believes that censorship in principle is 
contrary to the spirit of the American people. Normally, 
we do not have it in connection with either the spoken 
drama or the public press. Hitherto the police power has 
been sufficient to guard against flagrant abuses in these 
two media for the expression of ideas. Realizing, how¬ 
ever, that certain differences exist between the presenta¬ 
tion of ideas through the picture and through either the 
spoken or written word, and with a particular realization 
of the availability of motion pictures to young people, and 
with a further realization that many obscene and vulgar 
pictures have been eliminated by boards of censorship, the 
committee feels that some sort of regulation should be 
retained, at least for the present. It is undoubtedly true 
that the unfortunate use of the word “censorship" has 
created a prejudice in the minds of many. Our actions 
are regulated by law in many ways and this is merely 
another instance where the emergency makes it necessary. 

The committee believes that this function of regula¬ 
tion could best be exercised by the Federal government. It 
is to be hoped that should a Federal board be established, 
the states would not deem it necessary to establish their 
own boards in addition and that those states already hav¬ 
ing boards would eventually dispense with them as un¬ 
necessary. The states and smaller political subdivisions 
should rely for protection on the Federal board, except in 
such cases where local conditions introduce an element 
concerning which the Federal board has no knowledge, or 
can exercise no discretion. In such cases, the state or 
community could protect itself from the showing of an 
injurious film by the exercise of its local police power. 

A Federal board of review or regulation should be ap¬ 
pointed for not less than six years. It should be suffi¬ 
ciently large to insure a prompt review of all pictures pre¬ 
sented but at the same time allow for the careful and 
thorough handling of each. No picture should be 


144 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


reviewed by less than two members of the board and at 
least two members should concur in either passing or re¬ 
jecting a film or any part thereof. If a picture is rejected 
in whole or in part the producer should be allowed an 
appeal to the whole board, a decision of the majority 
being final. The salaries should be sufficiently large to 
attract only the highest type of civic-minded men and 
women for service on the board. It should be made 
mandatory that the board license all films except those 
which are found to be obscene, immoral, or of such a 
nature as to corrupt morals or incite to crime. The fol¬ 
lowing types of pictures should be exempted from the 
operation of the law: medical or educational films in¬ 
tended for use in schools, museums, etc.; films not in¬ 
tended to be shown to the general public, and news week¬ 
lies. The law should require the board to adopt certain 
published standards and regulations indicating specifically 
what kind of films or scenes would not be passed, this 
would tend to reduce materially the influence of the per¬ 
sonal element. These standards would place the producer 
on notice that it is a waste of his time and capital to pro¬ 
duce certain types of stories or inject certain kinds of 
objectionable scenes. Also the board should set up some 
means of advising the producer at the source of produc¬ 
tion. in the studio, which films in the making will meet 
the authorized standards and which will not. One of the 
protests of the producer is that under present conditions 
he may spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a film 
which he believes to be perfectly proper, only to have it 
rejected by some state censor board. He does not object 
as much to the censoring as he does to his inability to 
forecast what action the censors will take. This is a valid 
objection and would in a large measure be overcome by 
the adoption of a code of standards as outlined above. 
The board, of course, would have power to change these 
standards at any time, but changes as are made should not 
apply to films which are already in the process of produc¬ 
tion at the time when the change in standards is made. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


145 


I his provision would prevent ex post facto legislation by 
the board, which would do an irreparable injustice to the 
producer. 

If such a bill were found to be unconstitutional be¬ 
cause it violated the doctrine of states' rights, then all 
films would have to be excepted from its provisions ex¬ 
cept those intended for interstate or foreign shipment. 
Since films depend for their revenue on a wide distribu¬ 
tion, this would make practically all films subject to the 
law. 

Your committee believed that if such a bill became a 
law, the public would be amply protected from sugges¬ 
tive, immoral and obscene films and that, at the same 
time, the producer would be subject to the minimum of 
inconvenience and his investment would be much better 
protected than it is under the present multi-board system. 

(Twelve members of the committee signed this re¬ 
port ; four dissented and expressed the opinion that all 
censorship is unfair and un-American.) 

MINORITY REPORT 

To the Board of Directors of 

The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce : 

* Gentlemen : We, the undersigned, respectfully dissent from 
the conclusions and recommendations of the majority as set 
forth in the above report. 

We believe that the arguments presented to the committee 
in opposition to censorship far outweigh those presented in its 
favor. 

In our opinion censorship is un-American and contrary to 
the fundamental institutions of our government; it is dangerous 
in that every reason for motion picture censorship applies equally 
to censorship of the press and censorship of the stage. 

It is inconceivable that censorship can ever represent other 
than the views of the minority because for its very existence 
it depends solely on the personal opinion of the then constituted 
censors to determine what is proper and what is improper for 
the public to see. 

We do not believe that any politically appointed commission 
should decide the morals and tastes of one hundred million 
people. 

We believe the remedy lies in educating the public to desire 
the best pictures. We believe that the parent must be brought 


146 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


to realize his responsibility to his child and not seek to unload 
on the state his parental functions. 

The states and municipalities already have sufficient laws on 
their statute books passed under their rights of police power 
to adequately protect their citizens from immoral and injurious 
films. 

The newspaper cartoon has always been a means of political 
propaganda. The motion picture cartoon is even now being 
developed. It in its turn, will become a greater medium for 
the spread of political ideas. The censor boards will, of course, 
have the right to determine what may and what may not be 
shown in these cartoons. This means that these boards will 
inevitably become the strongest political powers in the nation. 

Why not constructive work to improve motion pictures in¬ 
stead of destructive work? 

Therefore, we subscribe ourselves as opposed to any form 
of legalized censorship whatever. 

(Signed by the Minority members of the Committee.) 

May 24th, 1922. 

CONTROL OF THE MOTION PICTURES 1 ' 

It is doubtful if we should expect to depend wholly 
upon voluntary citizen effort and interest in dealing 
with the motion picture business. It is a form of 
public service just as are the theaters, newspapers, 
parks, playgrounds, street cars, telephones, water sup¬ 
ply, etc., and should therefore be handled officially 
by law, ordinances and official inspection. Care should 
be taken, however, in working out details of this con¬ 
trol to see that the responsibility is placed squarely 
upon the business itself to produce a commodity that 
shall be beneficial to the public and as free as possible 
from anything harmful. That in substance is the 
problem. Volunteer citizen cooperation will probably 
continue to be needed in reflecting public opinion, as¬ 
sisting in checking up on compliance with official regu¬ 
lation, and in stimulating and developing the non¬ 
theatrical use of motion pictures. There would seem, 
however, to be no doubt about the desirability of some 
definite form of government organization. 

1 By Charles N. Lathrop. Excerpt from “The Motion Picture Problem,” 
by Charles N. Lathrop. Published by the Federal Council of the Churches 
of Christ in America. New York. 1922. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


147 


As the exhibitor—the local “movie" house manager 
—is the visible contact point of the motion picture 
industry with the public, the tendency is to think of 
him at once as the one to be brought under govern¬ 
ment control. Although he must operate under defi¬ 
nite regulation with respect to seating, lighting, sani¬ 
tation, fire prevention, admission of children, type of 
program, etc. to place the entire responsibility upon 
him for the character of the pictures shown would be 
like cleansing the stream at its mouth instead of at 
its source. The other agencies in the motion picture 
business, the producer and the distributor, must be 
regulated if any real improvement is to be brought 
about. That is why the National Board of Review 
operates primarily with the producers. 

Until recently most exhibitors subscribed for ser¬ 
vice from the exchanges—the distributors—and used 
what was sent to them without the opportunity to see 
the pictures in advance or even to select by title. This 
condition is gradually changing so that exhibitors are 
given more freedom in selecting pictures that will 
meet the requirements of their respective audiences. 
The larger motion picture houses select with great 
care well in advance of showing and plan their music 
and other accessories to the minutest detail. 

The scenario writing is a very important factor 
in determining the character of motion pictures. The 
producers have been severely criticised for spending 
so much money for star actors and actresses and so 
comparatively little on the preparation of their scen¬ 
arios, thus not securing the services of competent, 
high-grade people. The criticism of scenarios before 
production has been tried, but without much success. 
So much depends on the staging of the pictures and 
the details of acting that a picture may be made or 
marred in the production process. However, the sub¬ 
jects treated and the conduct and personal standards 
of the characters that are to be portrayed are 


148 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


important considerations. The chances for getting a 
decent picture from the story “Lavender and Old 
Lace” are much better than from “Tarzan of the Apes.” 

After a picture is completed the expense involved 
in making changes is an important item to consider. 
Destroying film and re-staging scenes is costly, to 
say nothing of the financial loss incurred when an 
entire picture is barred from circulation. In voluntary 
review or censorship there develop at once very real 
limits to which an organization can go in vetoing pic¬ 
tures or parts of pictures and still retain the coopera¬ 
tion of the producers. Cutting out an objectionable 
scene may mean a serious break in the story or the 
restaging of the entire part. Revision of subtitles 
sometimes will so change the dramatic situation as 
to eliminate an objectionable feature. This is a simple 
matter from the standpoint of expense. 

The Motion Picture Association proposed some 
time ago to furnish competent and technically experi¬ 
enced men who were in touch with public sentiment 
through citizen agencies, to sit in with stage directors 
of the producing companies and offer constructive 
criticism while the scenes were being arranged and 
photographed. A number of practical difficulties have 
interfered with the functioning of this plan. 

Individual judgment of motion pictures varies so 
greatly on account of personal tastes and environment 
that it is difficult to get even a small group to agree 
on the probable influence of a picture, to say nothing 
of making the action of either voluntary or official 
committees satisfactory to the public at large. One 
would expect that high-minded people would readily 
agree as to whether a picture was a proper or an im¬ 
proper one for public consumption, but in actual prac¬ 
tice we find the sharpest differences of opinion. Then, 
too, pictures that may be entirely without offense to 
people accustomed to the life of a large city or a 
bathing beach resort might easily be highly objection- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


149 


able to an audience in a rural community or an inland 
town. The best that it seems possible to do is to lay 
down broad standards of judgment with such specific 
illustrations as may be possible, and endeavor to get 
producers to observe them as faithfully as possible in 
selecting scenarios and staging their pictures. 

The “thirteen points” recently stated by a group 
of producers as the standards to which they propose 
to adhere are an attempt in that direction. These 
points are based upon detailed standards developed by 
The National Board of Review in their work with 
producers during the past several years. Briefly 
stated, they exclude pictures 

1. Which emphasize and exaggerate sex appeal or 
depict scenes therein exploiting sex in an improper or 
suggestive form or manner. 

2. Based on white slavery or commercialized vice 
or scenes showing the procurement of women or any 
of the activities attendant upon this traffic. 

3. Thematically making prominent an illicit love 
affair which tends to make virtue odious and vice at¬ 
tractive. 

4. Which exhibit nakedness or persons scantily 
dressed, particularly bedroom and bathroom scenes 
and scenes of exciting dances. 

5. Which unnecessarily prolong expressions or 
demonstrations of passionate love. 

6. Predominantly concerned with the underworld 
or vice and crime and like scenes, unless the scenes 
are part of an essential conflict between good and evil. 

7. Which make drunkenness and gambling attrac¬ 
tive or with scenes which show the use of narcotics 
and other unnatural practices dangerous to social 
morality. 

8. Which may instruct the morally feeble in meth¬ 
ods of committing crime or by cumulative processes 
emphasize crime and the commission of crime. 

9. Which ridicule or deprecate public officials, 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


LSo 

officers of the law, the United States army, the United 
States navy or other governmental authority, or which 
tend to weaken the authority of the law. 

10. Which offend the religious belief of any person, 
creed or sect or ridicule ministers, priests, rabbis, or 
recognized leaders of any religious sect, and also which 
are disrespectful to objects or symbols used in connec¬ 
tion with any religion. 

11. Which unduly emphasize bloodshed and vio¬ 
lence without justification in the structure of the 
story. 

12. Which are vulgar and portray improper ges¬ 
tures, posturings and attitudes. 

13. Salacious titles and sub-titles in connection with 
their presentation or exhibitions of films, and the use 
of salacious advertising matter, photographs and litho¬ 
graphs in connection therewith. 

Our thinking on the standards that should be ap¬ 
plied in making motion pictures is somewhat clouded 
by the feeling that the interests of children and young 
men and young women who make up a considerable 
part of most motion picture audiences should in some 
way be safeguarded. In spite of the efforts of local 
organizations to furnish special programs for children, 
many will continue to attend the regular motion pic¬ 
ture shows, and even if small children are barred by 
strict enforcement of regulations governing the at¬ 
tendance of those under specified age, the adolescent 
boys and girls will attend. What about them? Should 
all pictures be brought to the level of their needs? 
Even if we should agree that this should be so, there 
would be great difficulty in reaching an agreement on 
standards to be followed. Possibly a fair application 
of the thirteen points stated above would approximate 
what is desirable. It is surprising how we differ in 
our judgment of what is proper or improper for boys 
and girls to see, hear and read. A father with the 
best ideals and personal standards took his fifteen-year- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


151 

old daughter to see “Damaged Goods/’ She was 
shocked and hurt by what she saw, and some of his 
friends were greatly surprised that he should have 
taken her. lie contended that the picture in its hor¬ 
rible details drove home a lesson that boys and girls 
might better get from the motion picture screen than 
from personal experience. Here we touch one of the 
vigorously debated points in the function of motion 
pictures. Shall the motion picture show be limited 
to furnishing entertainment only, and is that what 
people pay their money to get; or may they properly 
attempt to educate their audiences and exert an in¬ 
fluence in the promotion of standards of morality? 
The motion picture industry contends that it should 
be no more restricted in this than is the stage, which 
claimed as one of its proper functions the dramatic 
presentation of the great truths of life and personal 
conduct. 

The April, 1921, issue of “Social Hygiene” prints 
the results of a study by Dr. Karl S. Lashley and Dr. 
John B. Watson of the Psychological Laboratory of 
Johns Hopkins University on the influence of motion 
pictures on young men and women with reference to 
matters of sex. Although this study is largely limited 
to “certain motion picture films used as a propaganda 
in venereal disease control," nevertheless the report 
has a direct bearing upon the questions arising out of 
the effect upon both young people and adults of many 
of the problem pictures that appear upon the screen. 
From the conclusions of this study, which are given 
in great detail, it appears that in audiences restricted 
to one sex, no ill effects were noticeable, but after 
showings to mixed audiences “there was a strong- 
tendency toward flippant discussion and innuendo be¬ 
tween boys and girls.” These observations are borne 
out by written answers to questionnaires used ex¬ 
tensively among the approximately five thousand peo¬ 
ple studied. The mixed audience is, of course, the 


152 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


only audience with which we are concerned in a dis¬ 
cussion of motion picture shows. 

It is not difficult to understand why official censor¬ 
ship—local, state or national—has been favored by 
many people as the best solution of the motion picture 
problems. It seems so direct and final, and it is as¬ 
sumed that it will relieve the public of all further re¬ 
sponsibility in the matter. During the legislative 
season of 1921, motion picture censorship bills were 
introduced in thirty-two states. State censorship was 
already in operation in four other states—Ohio, Penn¬ 
sylvania, Maryland, and Kansas. The discussion of 
the bills attracted nation-wide interest, and feeling 
for and against these measures ran high. As might 
have been expected, the motion picture interests, espe¬ 
cially the producers and distributors, lined up against 
this proposed legislation. The exhibitors might have 
been expected to favor it, as it would tend to relieve 
them of all responsibility to the public for all pictures 
shown, but they saw at once that the heavy toll ol 
expense exacted by state censorship boards would 
automatically be passed along to them and that they 
in turn would need to get this money from their pa¬ 
trons, thus increasing the admission prices already in¬ 
flated by war tax charges. It was even suggested that 
the posted admission price schedules might well in¬ 
dicate the amount for straight admission, the amount 
for war tax, and the amount to cover censorship costs. 
The exhibitors also feared a falling off in attendance 
as a result of showing pictures that had been passed 
upon by a censorship board and pronounced entirely 
proper for mixed audiences of both old and young that 
attend motion picture shows. They were practically 
unanimous in opposing official state censorship. 

Many of the citizen agencies that had been work¬ 
ing for better motion pictures were unwilling to en¬ 
dorse the principle of official censorship and threw 
their influence against the censorship bills. Others 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


153 


finite as vigorously supported them. The result was 
a rather worth-while educational campaign on the 
whole subject of public amusements. From a fairly 
general favoring of the censorship Fills at the outset, 
the pendulum of public opinion swung in the opposite 
direction as the discussion progressed and the un¬ 
desirable aspects of censorship became apparent. 

1 he final action in the thirty-two state legislatures 
was the defeat of censorship in twenty-nine states, 
the authorizing of censorship boards in two states— 
New York and Massachusetts—and the passage of a 
makeshift measure in one state—Florida—by which 
it was provided that only such pictures as had been 
passed by the National Board of Review and the New 
York State Motion Picture Commission could be 
shown. Several states passed substitute measures 
making it a misdemeanor to exhibit motion pictures 
that are obscene, indecent, or detrimental to the morals 
of the community. One of the most practical of these 
is that passed by the North Carolina legislature after 
an extended discussion of the whole subject. It reads 
as follows : 

That if any person, firm or corporation shall, for the purpose 
of gain or otherwise, exhibit any obscene or immoral motion 
picture, or if any person, firm or corporation shall post any 
obscene or immoral placard, writings or pictures or drawings 
on walls, fences, billboards or other places, advertising theatrical 
exhibitions or moving picture shows, or if any person, firm or 
corporation shall permit such obscene or immoral exhibition to 
be conducted in any tent, booth or other place or building owned 
or controlled by said person, firm or corporation, the person, 
firm or corporation performing either one or all of the said 
acts shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and punishable in the 
discretion of the court. That for the purpose of enforcing this 
statute any spectator at the exhibition of any obscene or im¬ 
moral moving picture may make the necessary affidavit upon 
which the warrant for said offense is issued. 

(Enacted IQ21.) 

Many states have similar laws which, if properly 
enforced, would no doubt go far toward dealing with 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


1 54 


the situation at which state censorsh 
aimed. 

The chief provisions of the five 
laws now in operation (Maryland, 
vania, Kansas, and New York) are 


ip measures are 

state censorship 
Ohio, Pennsyl- 
given below: 


Composition 

Maryland 

Three residents and citizens of the state, one of 
whom shall be a member of the political party polling 
the second highest vote at the last general election 
prior to their appointment, well qualified by educa¬ 
tion and experience to act as censors. One member 
shall be chairman, one member shall be vice-chairman 
and one member shall be secretary. 

Ohio 

Created under the authority and supervision of the 
Industrial Commission. Three persons shall constitute 
board—secretary of Industrial Commission shall act 
as Secretary. 

Pennsylvania 

Three residents and citizens of Pennsylvania, two 
males and one female, well qualified by education and 
experience, to act as censors. One male shall be chair¬ 
man, the female vice-chairman, and one male secretary. 

Kansas 

Three resident citizens of Kansas, well qualified by 
education and experience to act as censors. 

New York 

Motion Picture Commission—three commissioners, 
one designated chairman and one secretary. Each of 
the commissioners shall be citizens of the United States 
States with qualifications by education and experience 
for the duties of office. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 135 

Term of Office 
Maryland 

Three years (those first appointed for three, two, 
and one year respectively, the respective terms to be 
designated by the governor). 

Ohio 

Three years (those first appointed for three years, 
two years, and one year, respectively, appointed by 
the Industrial Commission with the approval of the 
governor). 

Pennsylvania 

Three years (those first appointed for three years, 
two years, and one year respectively, the respective 
terms to be designated by the governor). 

Kansas 

Three years (those first appointed for three years, 
two years, and one year respectively, the respective 
terms to be designated by the governor). 

New York 

Five years (commissioners first appointed shall con¬ 
tinue until the last days of 1922, 1924, and 1925 re¬ 
spectively, term of each to be designated by the gov¬ 
ernor). 

Appointment 

Maryland 

By the governor, by and with the advice and con¬ 
sent of the Senate. 

Ohio 

By the Industrial Commission with the approval 
of the governor. 

Pennsylvania 


By the governor. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 



Kansas 

I>y the governor. The governor at his pleasure 
may remove a member of said board for incompetency 
or neglect of duty. 

Kansas 

By the governor, by and with the consent of the 
Senate. May be removed by the governor (after no¬ 
tice and opportunity to be heard) for inefficiency, 
neglect or misconduct. 


Salaries 

Maryland 

(Before entering upon their duties each shall enter 
into bonds to the state in the sum of $3,000.) $2,400 

per annum for each member. 

Ohio 

$1,500 per annum. (Such salary and expenses shall 
in no case exceed the fees paid to the Ohio Board of 
Censors for examination and approval of moving pic¬ 
ture films). 

Pennsylvania 

(The chairman, vice-chairman and secretary shall, 
before assuming the duties of their respective offices, 
take and subscribe the oath prescribed by the Consti¬ 
tution of Pennsylvania, and shall enter into bonds to 
the Commonwealth in the sum of $3,000, $2,500, and 
$2,400, respectively.) Chairman $3,000 annually; vice- 
chairman $2,500 annually; secretary $2,400. 

Kansas 

Chairman, designated by the governor, give bond 
in the sum of $3,000 with security to be approved by 
the governor. Chairman $1,800 annually; other mem¬ 
bers $1,500 each annually together with such neces¬ 
sary travelling expenses incurred in carrying out the 
provisions of this act. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


157 


New York 

Each commissioner $7,500 annually. (The members 
of the commission shall be allowed all expenses actu¬ 
ally and necessarily incurred.) 

Fees 

Maryland 

For examination of each film, reel or set of views, 
the board shall receive in advance a fee of $2 and $1 
for each duplicate or print thereof. 

Ohio 

The board shall charge a fee of $1 for each reel 
of film to be censored which does not exceed one 
thousand lineal feet, and $1 for each additional one 
thousand lineal feet or fractional part thereof. 

Pennsylvania 

For the examination of each film, reel, or set of 
views of one thousand two hundred lineal feet, or less, 
the board shall receive, in advance, a fee of $1, and 
$1 for each duplicate of print thereof. 

Kansas 

For the examination of each film the board shall 
receive, in advance, a fee not to exceed $2 for each 
reel approved or censored, whether original or copies. 
The board shall have authority to reduce from time 
to time, the examination fee below the maximum 
aforesaid, if and when the fees collected shall be more 
than sufficient to pay all the salaries, charges and 
expenses connected with the carrying out of the pro¬ 
visions of this act. 

New York 

The commission shall collect from each applicant 
for license or permit $3 for each one thousand feet 
or fraction thereof of original film and $2 for each ad¬ 
ditional copy. 


158 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


The chief arguments that were used for and against 
state censorship of motion pictures are here given in 
brief: 

For Censorship 

To protect the child from the shock due to wit¬ 
nessing violence and gruesome details of crime, and 
to avoid encouragement to emulate evil examples. 

To protect the adolescent and undeveloped mind 
from suggestions of evil and violence. 

To do away with constant reiteration of criminal 
themes. 

To prevent use by producers of situations which 
contain attractive dramatic situations but which leave 
on the public a low moral influence. 

To protect religious groups and officials such as 
police, etc., from derision. 

To eliminate suggestions from Aims which might 
give wrong impressions to foreigners. 

To do away with the possibility of display of low 
films in poorer sections. 

To prevent vulgar comedies. 

To lessen emphasis on sex themes. 

To lessen the use of the domestic triangle. 

Present laws governing the display of obscene or 
immoral entertainment, etc., not adequate because not 
properly enforced, and in some cases not interpreted 
to cover motion pictures. 

Ac, atnst Censorship 

It is un-democratic. 

It is un-American. 

It is impossible for state and Federal censorship 
boards to meet local conditions. 

It would delay releases. 

The cost to the public would be increased. 

Political perversion of censorship privilege would 
he possible. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


159 


Set rules laid down by law do not allow interpreta¬ 
tion according to immediate problem. 

It affords opportunity for graft. 

Application of formal standard results in ridiculous 
and unjust eliminations and restrictions. 

Separate local and state boards cause duplication 
and increased expense to the public. 

Probable tendency on the part of producers to 
make up films with very obvious faults in order that 
there mav be something to delete. 

Censorship transfers responsibility for clean pic¬ 
tures from the producer and exhibitor to the censor¬ 
ship board. 

State boards take away local authority. 

Impossible to make all films suitable for children, 
as adult entertainment cannot be placed on the level 
of the child’s mind. 

Motion pictures should be regulated as books and 
theaters are regulated. 

It imposes special and unjust restriction upon this 
means of publicity. 

Some of the means other than censorship that are 
being considered and that might be put into operation 
to good advantage are given in brief form below: 

Licensing producers and distributers for carrying on 
business through interstate commerce, and licensing the 
local exhibitors under the usual regulations governing 
public amusements. 

Organization of local clubs, church organizations, etc., 
to make sure of enforcement of existing laws. 

Familiarizing the local exhibitor with the kind of pic¬ 
ture desired in his neighborhood. 

Organization through women’s clubs particularly to 
give publicity to type of film desired in order to encour¬ 
age exhibitors in the display of good pictures. 

Organized effort to investigate and force theaters in 
cheaper districts and foreign settlements to keep tip a 
high standard of film. 


i6o 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


Organization to have children attend shows on cer¬ 
tain nights and matinees and in this way make it worth 
the exhibitor's while to show films adapted for children 
at those times—then at other periods show any films that 
would be considered more essentially adult in their in¬ 
terest. 

Formation of citizen committees to serve as advisory 
boards to study and work out local plans for amusement 
regulation, this particularly in smaller towns. 

Interesting press to give space to reviews of films 
where they have several days' run. 

Exhibitors to make public in advance summaries of 
films. 

Newspaper and billboard advertising to be carefully 
watched bv either citizen committee or police authorities. 

Regular inspectors to look out for the physical clean¬ 
liness and proper sanitation and lighting of theaters and 
citizen groups to organize to check up on the type of 
films shown. 

Greater publicity given to the lists of commendable 
pictures issued by the Committee for Better Films. Local 
group request their exhibitors to use these films. 

A plan of control that is favored by some who have 
made a careful study of the whole matter embraces the 
following specific types of Federal, state and local legis¬ 
lation : 

1. Federal licensing of motion picture producers and 
distributors to do business through interstate commerce 
and a specific definition in connection with the granting 
of the license of all kinds of motion pictures that they 
would not be permitted to transport. Suspension or re¬ 
vocation of license and confiscation of films should be the 
penalty for transporting pictures that, in the judgment of 
the courts, are in violation of the conditions under which 
the license is granted. 

2. State laws making it a misdemeanor, with ade¬ 
quate penalties, to exhibit motion pictures that in the 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


161 


judgment of the courts are obscence, indecent and detri¬ 
mental to the morals of the people. 

3. Local licensing of exhibitors under regulations 
that would make possible the canceling of licenses if the 
exhibitors persist in holding exhibitions that are detri¬ 
mental to the welfare of the community. 

This would discourage the production of cpiestionable 
pictures, as the producing companies would not care to 
take the chance of losing their licenses or having their 
productions barred from interstate commerce. The ex¬ 
hibitor would be placed on his guard against committing 
a misdemeanor by exhibiting any unlawful picture and of 
losing his local license to carry on business. Suspension 
and possible revocation of licenses is a much more effec¬ 
tive deterrent than the imposing of a fine. 

There is evidently much to be said in favor of placing 
the burden of proof squarely upon the motion picture 
producers, distributors, and exhibitors for carrying on 
their business in such a way that it shall not be detrimen¬ 
tal to the public. When censorship boards are established 
to pass upon each picture produced and to say whether 
or not it may be exhibited, the responsibility is at once 
shifted from the motion picture industry to the official 
boards. 

The usual procedure in governmental control is to 
define the conditions under which the special kind of busi¬ 
ness or public service may be carried on and to definitely 
state the standards that must be maintained in the quality 
of the commodity to be offered for public consumption. 
The person or firm proposing to do business accepts 
these prescribed conditions and is granted a permit or 
license to operate within the stated limits. Failure to live 
up to the terms of the agreement may result in a fine 
being imposed or the suspension or revocation of the per¬ 
mit to do business. This places the responsibility where 
it belongs, squarely upon the individual or firm conduct¬ 
ing the business. In case either party to the contract 
feels that injustice is being done, there is always the 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


162 

orderly procedure of recourse to the courts for proper 
adjustment, thus insuring fair treatment for all con¬ 
cerned. The only prior consideration is the necessary sup¬ 
porting legislation in the form of Federal and state and 
local city and village ordinances. 

Why not follow this generally accepted governmental 
procedure in dealing with the motion picture business? 

MORALS AND THE MOVIES 1 

When I think of a '‘censor" I think of an aged man 
in a tile hat and a tight coat, buttoning black silk gloves 
around his wrists as he hurries from a theater to sum¬ 
mon the reserves. Here, however, is a professional cen¬ 
sor who doesn’t answer this description. Mr. Oberholtzer 
is secretary of the board that sits in judgment on the 
movies in Pennsylvania. But he is not a born censor like 
Mr. Sumner and the Reverend Dr. Straton. He is an 
ordinary author who became a censor accidentally, one 
day when the Governor’s office got him on the wire. And 
he is still enough the author, and little enough the ortho¬ 
dox censor, to remark: 

I have been described as an old man who never put his 
foot outside his native town. My beverages, I learn from the 
film newspapers, are lemonade and tea. My pursuit in hours 
not given to official duty is knitting. I am a disciple of Anthony 
Comstock, a prude, a fanatic, a moralist, a bigot. Ladies may 
not smoke cigarettes in my presence; no kiss may be longer 
than five feet. 

As you read, you come to the conclusion that here is 
a defence of censorship written by a human censor. It is 
an easy book to read. Mr. Oberholtzer lapses occasion¬ 
ally into the jargon of the Blue Law bitter-ender, but on 
the whole his book is freshly written. It starts with a 
survey of that large school of moving picture manufac¬ 
turers whose creed is to arouse a prurient curiosity on the 

1 By Charles Merz. New Republic. 33: 179. January 10. 1923. A re¬ 
view of Morals of the Movies, by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer. Penn Publish¬ 
ing Company. Philadelphia. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 163 

part of the weak-minded. For a sensation-jaded public 
they work feverishly to produce “something unusual,” 
“something different.” It is a contest in noise, and each 
new film must outshout its predecessor. “I sometimes 
think, says Mr. Oberholtzer, “that the picture has 
reached the screaming stage.” He reviews plots strug¬ 
gling to be sinful. He cites instances of pathetic labor 
for the all-important “sex lure” : Tennyson’s Maud, for 
instance, rechristened on the screen as Naked Hearts. 
He lists a few months’ run of thrillers: The Beast, The 
Hell Cat, The She Devil, The Scarlet Woman, The Sin 
Woman, The Scarlet Sin, The Mortal Sin, Sins of 
Parents, Sins of Mothers, Sins of Fathers, sins visited 
upon the children even unto the third and fourth genera¬ 
tion. He walks you not down Broadway, with its well 
mannered comedies and billion-dollar pageants—but along 
Ninth Avenue, aflame with tawdry lithographs and reek¬ 
ing with cheap vice. 

Mr. Oberholtzer thinks there is more of this Ninth 
Avenue than those of us on Broadway ever realize. He 
sees these “sin” pictures as “deteriorating and destructive 
factors.” Especially are they dangerous, he thinks, be¬ 
cause they present ideas “in a form which all but the 
smallest child can unmistakably understand.” I am no 
friend of the censor, as such,” he declares. “But here are 
exceptional needs to cover exceptional cases.” It is hope¬ 
less to expect the public to guard its morals for itself— 
because “we all know that for one person with a re¬ 
sponsible social sense there are fifty who have none.” Con¬ 
sequently there must be some socialized control. “We are 
entitled to some assurance that sex shall not be set before 
11 s in ugly forms. . . Sugary, ladylike film, warranted 
not to hurt the littlest child, is not what any of us ask 
for. We wish simply that it shall be decent, as decent 
as the life around us.” Nor is control of this sort an 
assault on freedom. “I find nothing strange in such an 
exercise of power . . . that someone, seeing all from a 
height and representing the common interest, should have 


164 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


an editor’s powers over what in film output shall appear 
to contravene public policy.” 

This is Mr. Oberholtzer’s argument, the wise man as 
his brother’s keeper. It is an argument presented from the 
layman’s point of view, and in certain places it is well 
documented. And yet, from a partisan so reasonable and 
a crusader so in earnest as Mr. Oberholtzer, I find myself 
expecting a good deal more on several points. 

Nowhere in this book is there a real attempt to answer 
the fundamental counter-argument against the whole 
theory of a censorship: the argument that censorship 
costs more in surrendered intellectual freedom than it can 
possibly save in any theoretic check upon “temptation”— 
and, meantime, that it may actually whet an interest in 
the very “evils” it struggles to suppress. Mr. Ober¬ 
holtzer may disbelieve in both these points; but he is not 
convincing when he overlooks them. That is what he 
does consistently—though on one occasion he comes peri¬ 
lously close to bumping into half the argument when 
he notes the fact that forbidding a picture in one state 
often “lengthens the queue in front of the ticket window” 
in the next. 

Suppose, however, that we admit the need of some sort 
of censorship; a large question still remains in deciding 
what sort of censorship it should be. Mr. Oberholtzer 
himself believes that the movie’s one-night stand, plus the 
inadequacy of local methods of police inspection, make 
censorship before exhibition “the only practical plan of 
dealing with the subject.” That may be true. But the 
difference between censorship before exhibition, coming 
from a board enthroned on high, and punishment after . 
when the picture has had its test before the public and the 
courts, is so fundamental in any conception of supervision 
over public morals that Mr. Oberholtzer owes it to his 
text to furnish more conclusive evidence than he has 
summoned in this volume. 

Finally, granting that we are going to have just this 
kind of censor, even then Mr. Oberholtzer pays scant at- 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


165 


tention to the problem of instructing him. He should “see 
all from a height” and “represent the common interest.” 
But those are vague commands. Censorship before the act 
is necessarily a personal equation. It happens, for in¬ 
stance, that Mr. Oberholtzer’s Pennsylvania board rules 
out as objectionable such things as “lingerie displays” and 
“pocket-picking,” “birth control’’ and “theft of hand¬ 
bags ;” another board might not agree. The Pennsyl¬ 
vania law leaves everything in the hands of the adminis¬ 
trator, ruling simply that the board of censors shall dis¬ 
approve “such films as are sacrilegious, obscene, indecent 
or immoral, or such as tend, in the judgment of the 
board, to debase or corrupt morals. . .” All censorship 
laws read that way- And the latitude of possible inter¬ 
pretation, with its chances of stupidity and petty tyranny, 
is simply terrifying. 


ABSURDITY OF CENSORSHIP 1 

The absurdity of censorship lies mainly in its applica¬ 
tion. Only the highest quality of intellect and under¬ 
standing is capable of acting as a censor, and it is obvious 
that no man or woman of fine intelligence will act in any 
way as a censor of the arts; therefore such activity is left 
in the power of those individuals who have little, if any, 
sense of value in literature, drama, and art generally. 
Certainly if there has ever been any doubt of the truth of 
this contention it has been recently dispelled by the printed 
statements of certain men who are trying to organize a 
board of censorship over literature and drama. Some 
of their opinions on books would put a school boy to 
shame. “The difficulty with censorship,” states an edi¬ 
torial in the New York Sun, “is that it can accomplish 
nothing which cannot be just as well accomplished with¬ 
out its help.” This is a truth which can be understood 
by anybody. No man or committee of men is qualified 

1 By Horace B. Liveright. Independent, no: 192-3- March 17, 1923. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


166 

either by nature or education to decide whether a book 
is indecent or not. The social judgment is necessary 
and this can only be had from a widespread public opin¬ 
ion. 

Unlike many of the men whose absurd opinions are 
now breaking out publicly, every publisher knows the 
exact difference between frankness and obscenity, and 
he functions according to his understanding of this. 
The editorial minds in any publishing house are severe 
and competent censors, but they judge only by intelli¬ 
gent standards. In a book they demand, as H. L. 
Mencken puts it,” that it be dignified in conception, 
artistically honest, faithful to life and fine in work¬ 
manship. “There is nothing pornographic in any work 
of literature, or even such books as can hardly be classi¬ 
fied as literature. Pornographic books have been issued, 
but they are manufactured by obscure printers, in 
Europe and America, and are sold by peddlers; they 
are not issued by publishers or by reliable printers. Like 
a thief, they usually work in the dark and can seldom 
be reached by censors or anti-vice societies, and then 
only by accident. Their discovery is difficult, though 
they existed for hundreds of years and I am reliably 
informed that they exist today. 

Certain facts of life exist, and their relation to other 
facts and to human behavior can only be expressed 
through the medium of words. These words and their 
meanings being part of our common tongue are printed 
in the dictionary. Let us then begin by confiscating all 
such dictionaries which have illicit words and defini¬ 
tions printed in them, for it is the use of these ideas 
by authors which make a book obscene. They create 
situations which offend these morality mongers, who 
possess an incurable inferiority complex. 

Certain fiction, which seems to be the principal object 
of attack today, expresses itself according to the contem¬ 
porary interpretation of science, abnormal psychology, 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


167 


psycho-analysis, and other methods of study of human 
behavior. Art and mind are always in process of 
change; a new age had a new literary and philosophic 
expression. But this affects only the intelligent minded; 
never the ignorant. Good art lives and bad art dies, 
that is all we know; and intelligent Americans are as 
capable of appreciating this fact as any other people. 
There is only one test and that is the test of intelligence, 
though a work may not be good art and yet have a use¬ 
ful or entertaining place in the world. ‘‘Obscenity— 
the word already vague enough after such repeated use— 
would come to mean little or nothing if the people who 
most fear this have their way, it is a word that will be 
so quickly diluted and enlarged as to drown all litera¬ 
ture.” (The New Republic, March 7). 

Frankness in literature relating to sexual matters 
never corrupted or depraved anyone, adult or child. It 
is difficult for some people to realize this, but any judge 
of a criminal court should know what every student of 
life and society knows, viz.: that the so-called depraved 
or vicious classes or types have no contact whatever 
with literature beyond the daily newspaper. This is so 
well known that it has become a platitude. We may be¬ 
come depraved by, or vicious by, economic or physical 
conditions, but certainly not by literature. 

That very wise man, Lord Macaulay, stated the 
matter for all time in his famous essay on the Restora¬ 
tion Dramatists: 

We cannot wish that any works or class of works which 
has exercised a great influence on the human mind, and which 
illustrates the character of an important epoch in letters, politics, 
and morals, should disappear from the world. If we err in this 
matter, we err with the gravest men and bodies of men in the 
empire, and especially with the church of England, and with 
the great schools of learning which are connected with her. The 
whole liberal education of our countrymen is conducted on the 
principle that no book which is valuable, either by reason of its 
excellence of style, or by reason of light it throws on history, 
polity, and manners of nations, should be withheld from the 
student on account of its impurity. The Athenian comedies in 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


168 

which there are scarcely a hundred lines without some passage 
of wdiich Rochester would have been ashamed, have been re¬ 
printed by the Pitt Press and the Clarendon Press, under the di¬ 
rection of Syndics and delegates appointed by the Universities, 
and have been illustrated with notes by reverend, very reverend, 
commentators. Every year the most distinguished young men 
in the kingdom are examined by bishops and professors of 
divinity in such works as the Lysistrata of Aristophanes and 
the sixth satire of Juvenal. There is certainly something a 
little ludicrous in the idea of a conclave of the venerable fathers 
of the church praising and rewarding a lad on account of his 
intimate acquaintance with writings compared with which the 
loosest tale in Prior is modest. But, for our owni part, we 
have no doubt that the greatest societies wffiich have directed 
the education of the gentry have herein judged wisely. It is 
unquestionable that man whose mind has been thus enlarged 
and enriched is likely to be far more useful to the state and to 
the church than one who is unskilled, or little skilled, in classical 
learning. On the other hand we find it difficult to believe that, 
in a world so full of temptation as this, any gentleman whose 
life would have been virtuous if he had uot read Aristophanes 
and Juvenal will he made vicious by reading them. 

The virtue which the world wants is a healthful virtue, not 
a valetudinarian virtue; a virtue which can expose to the risks 
inseparable from all spirited exertion, not a virtue which keeps 
out of the common air for fear of infection, and eschews com¬ 
mon food as too stimulating. It would indeed be absurd to 
attempt to keep men from acquiring those qualifications which 
fit them to play their part in life with honor to themselves and 
advantage to their country, for the sake of preserving a delicacy 
which cannot be preserved, a delicacy which a walk from West¬ 
minster to the Temple is sufficient to destroy. 

A censorship over literature and the other arts is 
stupid, ignorant, and impudent, and is against the funda¬ 
mental social principles of all intelligent Americans. 
There is no place for such crudity in our present civil¬ 
ization, and even the most conservative press and in¬ 
dividual opinion have expressed themselves against it 
most emphatically. Who is really in favor of it? 


LET GEORGE DO IT 1 

Many people feel that something ought to be done 
about the screen, and, having the impulse to do some- 

1 From the New York Times. March 13, 1921. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


169 


thing, jump at the thing that seems most obvious and 
easy. Thus they satisfy the demand for action arising 
within themselves, and are permitted to rest in peace, 
even if nothing is accomplished. It is a well kncwn 
psychological fact that human beings often act sub¬ 
consciously for the sake of the satisfaction they derive 
from the sensation of acting rather than for the ac¬ 
complishment of the object which they honestly think 
is their sole concern. That’s why there is so much 
unreasoned activity in the world, and doesn’t it explain 
a large part of the most sincere effort for motion pic¬ 
ture censorship? 

If a person subjects his impulse to do something 
about the screen to the direction of reason, will he 
have any faith in state censorship? Can lie find any 
evidence that the censorship of books, the stage or the 
screen has ever done any good? Will he not discover 
that censorship has always done more harm than good? 
Let him examine the evidence and he will see that 
it is all against censorship, and if he looks behind it 
he will see why. 

In the first place, censors are political appointees 
and politics frequently plays a part in their decisions. 
Social and economic bias is a factor, too, and religious 
and provincial prejudices are always strong in censors. 
Also, it is less majeste to suggest that corruptions, more 
or less disguised, might sometimes influence them. Does 
any one really expect great wisdom in censors? And yet 
they must be exceedingly wise if they are to do what 
many people expect of them. 

To face the issue squarely, let any ordinarily in¬ 
telligent and informed man or woman first imagine 
what censors ought to do and then try to imagine 
them doing it. He or she could scarcely be called a 
cynic if the second mental effort failed to reproduce 
the image of the first. 

It is true that censorship in New York, say, 
might prevent the exhibition of some pictures dealing 


170 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


and “sex.” but these 


deleteriously in "vice/' "crime ana "sex, 
words are quoted here because they are tags that would 
be attached to good photoplays as well as had to ex¬ 
clude the one as effectively as the other. Also, count¬ 
less pictures as evil in their influence as any would 
escape tagging and gain power by the fact of their 
licensing. Such has been the way of censorship wher¬ 
ever it has been tried. 

And the censors could not touch the thousand and 
one films that annually corrupt public taste, inculcate 
false ideas of life, give charlatanry the voice of au¬ 
thority, spread misinformation about scientific facts 
and theories, and put the stamp of approval on con¬ 
duct, manners and customs far below, the standards 
accepted by every person of intelligence and refine¬ 
ment. Look at the motion pictures you see. How 
many of them deal in melodramatic absurdities, ro¬ 
mantic tommyrot and moral buncombe? How many 
of them parade parvenus as socially perfect, glorify 
crude bipeds as noble heroes and heroines, offer 
mechanical puppets as logical human beings? What 
censor would exclude a picture because its hero was 
a fool or its heroine a senseless manikin? What censor 
would deny public exhibition to a picture because it 
brought nothing of truth or beauty to the screen while 
pretending to bring both ? What censor would bar a 
picture because its only effect would be to discourage 
the reading of good books and the witnessing of good 
plays? What censor would insist that a photoplay 
contribute to the artistic wealth of the people rather 
than increase their cultural poverty? And are not pic¬ 
tures that degrade the mind and corrupt the emotions 
as bad as any? 

The truth of the matter is that people get the 
kind of pictures, as well as the kind of government, 
they deserve, and unless they have the intelligence 
and the will to exert themselves and create a demand 
for better pictures they won’t get them. Those who 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


171 

wish to do something- about motion pictures need not 
he idle. They can form groups and committees to 
f oster a demand for better pictures. Communities where 
a reasonably high average of education and morality 
prevails can organize to support the theaters showing 
the kind of pictures most nearly approaching what they 
desire and to boycott those houses that feature trash. 
In sections where some uplifting agency is needed, 
settlement and neighborhood houses, for example, can 
do much toward educating the people to want better 
pictures and seeing to it that they get them. And 
everywhere people can institute separate shozvs for 
children and adults, getting away from the preposter¬ 
ous idea that all motion pictures must be suitable for 
immature minds. Individual parents can cease to shirk 
their own responsibilities and abandon the vain hope 
of passing on to the state what is bound to remain 
undone unless they do it themselves. 

People can do all of these things, but it is probable 
that they won’t if censorship comes as a deluding pan¬ 
acea to relieve men and women only too glad to escape 
trouble of the feeling that they must do something. 
They will say, “Let George do it,” and George will be 
impotent. 

But, some may say, this proposed remedy is tre¬ 
mendously difficult, relentlessly exacting, painfully 
slow. It is. But does that prove that censorship will 
easily, leniently and speedily accomplish the same re¬ 
sult? Because a doctor cannot prescribe a comfortable 
and quick remedy for a deep-seated ailment, should the 
patient take the nostrum of a quack? It's better to do 
nothing at all than something that will do more harm 
than good. 

The above article expresses so admirably the aims 
and position of the National Board of Review of Mo¬ 
tion Pictures, that it is pertinent in connection with 
this article to answer the question— 


172 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


What is the National Board of Review? 

The National Board of Review was organized in 
1909 at the request of the then Mayor of New York, 
Hon. George B. McClellan, who, acting on the sug¬ 
gestion of the New York city motion picture exhibitors, 
requested the People’s Institute to organize a citizens’ 
committee for the review of motion pictures. A com¬ 
mittee of thirteen was appointed by Charles Sprague 
Smith, at that time Director of the People’s Institute. 

The national board is now composed of one hundred 
and sixty-eight members, of whom one hundred and forty 
are assigned to the Review Committee and twenty-eight 
act on the General Committee. The Review Committee 
is divided into sections, each section meeting one morn¬ 
ing or afternoon during the week. Regularity of atten¬ 
dance is one of the requirements of membership. The 
General Committee is the governing body and court of 
appeal. It usually meets once a week, sometimes oftener, 
reviewing pictures which have been appealed by either 
the minority members of the Review Committee or the 
producer or regarding which when exhibited in the 
theaters there appears divided public opinion. 

No person in any way connected with the motion 
picture industry is permitted to serve on the National 
Board of Review. All applications for membership are 
passed upon by a committee of five chosen from the 
General and Review committees. No persons acting 
upon the national board receive any compensation 
whatsoever for their services, the members paying 
their own expenses even to carfare to attend meetings. 
The secretarial staff and office assistants are paid em¬ 
ployees of the national board, responsible to the 
board’s executive committee. They have no vote upon 
the pictures under consideration and no voice in estab¬ 
lishing the policies or standards of the board, all de¬ 
cisions on pictures and policies being made by the 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


173 


volunteer members who give their time and services 
in the public interest. 

The decisions of the national board are conveyed 
to city officials in the leading cities of thirty-eight 
states through the medium of a bulletin issued each 
Saturday. The local officials charged with the regula¬ 
tion of commercial amusements, which includes the 
licensing of motion picture theaters, conduct a local 
inspection of the pictures reviewed by the national 
Board and check up to see that the required changes 
have been faithfully carried out. 

The members of the national board in passing 
upon pictures also mark whether suitable for family 
entertainments, special young people’s performances, 
church or educational use. The board issues monthly 
and weekly lists of the pictures thus selected, a bul¬ 
letin of critical reviews of “exceptional photoplays,” 
a monthly magazine of information for those concerned 
in the use of worth-while pictures, and various pam¬ 
phlets on the Better Films Movement, methods of reg¬ 
ulation, the question of censorship and the activities 
of the board in general. 

The national board is financed by levying a tax 
on the producers for each reel of film reviewed. In 
addition to the funds derived from this tax, the ma¬ 
jority of municipalities receiving the board’s bulletin 
service pay for the expense of issuing the bulletin. 
The board also derives an increasing revenue from the 
sale of its lists and literature, and receives contribu¬ 
tions for the support of its work from public spirited 
citizens who are interested in preventing the enactment 
of censorship laws which would hamper and restrict 
this important medium of expression, but who are 
anxious that motion pictures be maintained as a clean 
and wholesome form of amusement. 

The national board still functions under the aus¬ 
pices of the People’s Institute and continues to con- 


1 74 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


duct its general educational campaign emphasizing the 
responsibility of parents to discriminate in the types 
of pictures they allow their children to see, advocating 
the enactment of local ordinances for the regulation 
of questionable advertising, and conducting its educa¬ 
tional work against censorship in the belief that legal¬ 
ized censorship of motion pictures is abhorrent to the 
principles of freedom upon which the United States 
were founded. 


AIMS AND ACTIVITIES OF THE 
MOTION PICTURE PRODUCERS AND 
DISTRIBUTORS OF AMERICA, INC. 

On July 12, 1922, a committee of the Cleveland, O., 
Chamber of Commerce closed its report on the censor¬ 
ship of motion pictures as follows: 

Early in 1922 the producers and distributors of motion pic¬ 
tures, realizing that the moral tone of their productions must 
he raised in order to retain continued public approval, organized 
an association known as Motion Picture Producers and Distribu¬ 
tors of America, Inc. Mr. Will H. Hays, then Postmaster- 
General, resigned his portfolio in the Cabinet and became Presi¬ 
dent of this new organization. Its purpose, set forth in its 
Articles of Association, is as follows: 

“The object for which the corporation is to be created is 
to foster the common interests of those engaged in the motion 
picture industry in the United States, by establishing and main¬ 
taining the highest possible moral and artistic standards in mo¬ 
tion picture production, by developing the educational as well 
as the entertainment value and the general usefulness of the 
motion picture, by diffusing accurate and reliable information 
with reference to the industry, by reforming abuses relative to 
the industry, by securing freedom from unjust or unlawful ex¬ 
actions, and by other lawful and proper means." 

There has been evidence in the newspapers, during the last 
few months, indicating that this new association sincerely and 
seriously intends to correct the evils which caused its organiza¬ 
tion. The pictures which are being produced this summer will 
be released in the autumn ; the people will be able to judge at 
that time whether the efforts of the organization have been 
successful. For that reason, further consideration of this report 
is postponed. 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


175 


The producers have always claimed that they should 
be judged by public opinion rather than a board of 
censors. But realizing that there are many varieties 
of public opinion, Mr. Hays, President of the Motion 
Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Inc., 
employed Mr. Jason S. Joy to organize and become 
executive secretary of a Committee on Public Rela¬ 
tions with the object of establishing contacts with 
many national organizations so that he could reflect 
to the industry the reactions of the public. In a letter 
submitting to Mr. Hays a report of the work of this 
committee, Mr. Lee F. Hanmer, of the Russell Sage 
Foundation, says: ‘'He is in a position to acquaint 
the interested public with the purpose of the industry 
to produce the kind of pictures that the American 
people want and also with the problems involved in 
meeting this public demand. Such an exchange of in¬ 
formation between the public and the industry affords 
great possibilities for better mutual understanding and 
cooperation.” 

Flere is a brief resume of facts pertaining to affairs 
of the committee to date, March 22, 1923, as reported 
by Mr. Joy. 

1. Invited by Mr. Will H. Hays to organize June 22, 1922. 

2. Executive Secretary appointed and functioning Sept. 1st. 

3. Committee is composed of 78 members of 62 national 
organizations, with an estimated combined membership of 
60,000,000. 

4. An Executive Committee composed of 29 members of 
17 national organizations with an estimated combined 
membership of 11,000,000. 

5. The Committee acts as a channel of communication be¬ 
tween the public and the industry, submitting comments, 
criticisms, and suggestions to the industry, and telling 
the public of the problems and developments of the in¬ 
dustry and about commendable pictures. 

6. There have been held 11 meetings of the Committee. 

7. 128 pictures have been reviewed by national organizations 
for the purpose of listing them for the benefit of their 
members. 

8. The Executive Secretary’s correspondence amounts to 
35,652 letters. 


THE REFERENCE SHELF 


17 6 


9. The Executive Secretary has held approximately 500 
conferences with representatives of organizations. 

10. Approximately 385,000 copies of literature have been 
mailed. 

(Signed) Jason S. Joy 

Executive Secretary. 

Among the organizations having representatives on 
this Committee on Public Relations are the Russell 
Sage Foundation, American Historical Association, 
American Federation of Labor, General Federation of 
Women’s Clubs, Young Men’s Christian Association, 
the American Legion, Boy Scouts of America, et al. 

Another activity of the committee’s executive of¬ 
ficers is to present the case against censorship when¬ 
ever the occasion arises. Here is copy of a letter to 
the compiler of this little book from Mr. Turner Jones, 
representative of the Public Relations Committee in 
Atlanta, Ga.: 

I am enclosing a number of pieces of literature on the sub¬ 
ject of censorship which may be of assistance to you. The 
strongest arguments against censorship to my mind are the 
patent failures of the censors in states having established boards 
to accomplish the results desired by the advocates of censor¬ 
ship. The repudiation of censorship in Ohio by the Congress 
of Mothers and Parent-Teachers and the Juvenile Protective 
Association; the repudiation in New York by Dwight Hillis, 
by Justice Jenks and Governor Smith, etc. 

Censorship can do nothing for the child, it being impossible 
to standardize an adult amusement for children. It does nothing 
to create a progressive demand on the part of the public for 
better pictures, since it can in no way be a constructive leader, 
but is only a restraining order. 

The passage of a state censorship law merely shifts the re¬ 
sponsibility from the shoulders of the individual to the state, 
and results in a less discriminating audience than we have at 
present, which in my opinion is the curse of the industry today. 
It also relieves the producer and exhibitor of all responsibility, 
and in my opinion will result in stagnation. 

The application of formal standards results in ridiculous and 
unjust eliminations and restrictions, as is well illustrated on 
the sheets being mailed you entitled “Putting Sense into Censor¬ 
ship,” 


MOTION PICTURE CENSORSHIP 


177 


The censorship of the screen will undoubtedly lead to censor¬ 
ship of other matters—as you know, only after a hard fight 
was censorship of books and literature in general defeated in 
the recent New York legislature. 

Political provision of the censors privilege is a well estab¬ 
lished fact, as demonstrated during the Ohio and Pennsylvania 
coal and iron strikes, and also during the recent presidential 
campaign when Governor Cox’s statements to the public were 
cut out of the news reels, and Mr. Harding’s left in. 

Naturally the cost to the public is increased by censorship. 

For example—take the official records of some of the boards 
of censorship for last year;—Maryland made eliminations in 
25 per cent of the pictures reviewed, and rejected a total of 
twenty-five pictures; Virginia made eliminations in 6 per cent, 
and rejected seven pictures; Kansas made eliminations in 9 per 
cent, and rejected twenty-eight pictures; New York made elim¬ 
inations in 20 per cent and rejected seventy-two pictures—surely 
the morality of the various states does not vary in this propor¬ 
tion, and yet that is the only logical conclusion to be deduced 
not permit it, and the theaters are cooperating with public 
from the actions of the censors. 

For example—Maryland rejected The IVeh of Life, Virginia 
and New York passed it, and Ohio rejected it. Maryland and 
Ohio rejected The Door That Has No Key, while Virginia and 
New York passed it without eliminations. Maryland passed 
The Virgin of the Seminole, Kansas rejected it, Virginia made 
three eliminations, Ohio and New York passed it. Maryland 
rejected A Woman of No Importance, and all of the other 
states passed it. 

The interesting point is that none of the pictures named 
have been shown in the south, because public opinion would 
not permit it, and the theatres are cooperating with public 
opinion, but should we have censorship, then we would be forced 
to play whatever the censors would pass. I might go on with 
an unlimited list of pictures on which the different boards could 
reach no agreement whatsoever, but this is sufficient for your 
information. 



























































































































































































































































